ooth, so thou art!" quoth she. "_Bess_, give me thine help."

"I am beholden to you, Mistress _Joyce_," saith Cousin _Bess_, "but I
love not to meddle in no frays of other folk. I were alway learned that
women were the meaner sort o' th' twain."

"Go thy ways, thou renegade!" saith Aunt _Joyce_.

"Come, _Joyce_, shall I aid thee?" quoth _Father_.

"Nay, thou hypocrite, I'll not have thee," saith she. "Thou shouldst
serve me as the wooden horse did the Trojans." And she added some
_Latin_ words, the which I wist not. [Note 3.]

"`_Femme qui parle Latin
Ne vient jamais a bonne fin_.'"

saith Sir _Robert_ under his voice.

"That is because you like to have it all to yourselves," saith Aunt
_Joyce_, turning upon him. "There be _few_ men would not fainer have a
woman foolish than learned. Tell me wherefore?"

"I dispute the major," quoth he, and shaked his head.

"Then I'll tell you," pursueth she. "Because--to give you _French_ for
your _French_--`_Parmi les aveugles, les borgnes sont rois_.' You love
to keep atop of us; and it standeth to reason that the lower down we are
the less toil shall you have in climbing."

"`Endless genealogies, which breed doubts more than godly edifying,'"
saith _Father_. "Are we not landed in somewhat like them?"

"Well, Sir _Robert_, I'll forgive you!" saith Aunt _Joyce_, and held
forth her hand. "But mark you, I am right and you are wrong, for all
that."

Sir _Robert_ lifted Aunt _Joyce's_ hand to his lips, with ever so much
fun in his eyes, though his mouth were as grave as a whole bench of
judges.

"My mistress," said he, "I have been wed long enough to have learned
never to gainsay a gentlewoman."

"Nay, _Dulcie_ never learned you that!" saith Aunt _Joyce_. "I know her
better. Your daughters may have done, belike."

Sir _Robert_ did but laugh, and so ended the matter.

SELWICK HALL, MARCH THE XXX.
So here I am come to the last day of our Chronicle--to-morrow being
_Sunday_, when methinks it unseemly to write therein, without it were
some godly meditations that should come more meeter from an elder pen
than mine. To-morrow even I shall give the book into the hands of Aunt
_Joyce_, that she may read the same, and write her own thoughts thereon:
and thereafter shall _Father_ and _Mother_ and _Anstace_ read it. There
be yet fifteen leaves left of the book, and metrusteth Aunt _Joyce_
shall fill them every one: f