ther side the fire; Aunt _Joyce_ in the place she best loveth,
in the window. Cousin _Bess_ and _Mynheer_ were gone on their
occasions. _Ned_ and we three maids were in divers parts of the
chamber; _Ned_ carving of a wooden boat for _Anstace_ her little lad,
and we at our sewing.

"Wilt tell me, _Wat_," saith _Father_, "what years thou hast?"

"Why, Sir," quoth he, "I reckon you know that something better than I;
but I have alway been given to wit that the year of my birth was
Mdlvii." [1557.]

"The which, sith thou wert born in _July_, makes thee now of two and
twenty years," _Father_ makes answer.

"I believe so much, Sir," saith _Walter_, that looked somewhat diverted
at this beginning.

"And thy wage at this time, from my Lord of _Oxenford_, is sixteen pound
by the year?" [Note 1.]

"It is so, Sir," quoth _Wat_.

"And what reckonest thy costs to be?"

"In good sooth, Sir, I have not reckoned," saith he.

"Go to--make a guess."

_Wat_ did seem diseased thereat, and fiddled with his chain. At the
last (_Father_ keeping silence) he saith, looking up, with a flush of
his brow--

"To speak truth, Sir, I dare not."

"Right, my lad," saith _Father_. "Speak the truth, and let come of it
what will. But, in very deed, we must come to it, _Wat_. This matter
is like those wounds that 'tis no good to heal ere they be probed. Nor
knew I ever a chirurgeon to use the probe without hurting of his
patient. Howbeit, _Wat_, I will not hurt thee more than is need. Tell
me, dost thou think that all thy costs, of whatsoever kind, should go
into two hundred pound by the year?"

The red flush on _Wat's_ brow grew deeper.

"I am afeared not, Sir," he made answer, of a low voice.

"Should they go into three?" _Wat_ hesitated, but seemed more diseased
[uncomfortable] than ever.

"Should four overlap them?"

_Wat_ brake forth.

"_Father_, I would you would scold me--I cannot stand it! I should feel
an hard whipping by far less than your terrible gentleness. I know I
have been a downright fool, and I have known it all the time: but what
is a man to do? The fellows laugh at you if you do not as all the rest.
Then they come to one every day, with, `Here, _Louvaine_, lend me a
sovereign,'--and `Look you, _Louvaine_, pay this bill for me,'--and they
should reckon you the shabbiest companion ever lived, if you did it not,
or if, having done it, you should ask them for it again."

"_Wat_!" saith Aunt _Joyce_ fr