ou do then for company?"

"Marry, I can content me with Aunt _Joyce_ and Cousin _Bess_," quoth I,
"and none so bad neither."

So at after that we gat to other discourse, and after a while, when
_Milly_ came in with the childre, we all went down into the great
chamber, where _Father_, and _Hal_, and _Mynheer_, were yet at their
weighty debates. Cousin _Bess_ was sat in the window, a-sewing on some
flannel: and Aunt _Joyce_, in the same window, but the other corner, was
busied with tapestry-work, being a cushion that she is fashioning for a
_Christmas_ gift for some dame that is her friend at _Minster Lovel_.
'Tis well-nigh done; and when it shall be finished, it shall go hence by
old _Postlethwaite_ the carrier; for six weeks is not too much betwixt
here and _Minster Lovel_.

As we came in, I heard _Father_ to say--

"Truly, there is no end of the diverse fantasy of men's minds." And
then he brought forth some _Latin_, which I conceived not: but
whispering unto Aunt _Joyce_ (which is something learned in that tongue)
to say what it were, she made answer, "So many men, so many minds."
[_Quot homines, tot sententiae_.]

"Ha!" saith _Mynheer_. "Was it not that which the Emperor _Charles_ did
discover with his clocks and watches? He was very curious in clocks and
watches--the Emperor _Charles_ the Fifth--you know?--and in his chamber
at the Monastery of _San Yuste_ he had so many. And watching them each
day, he found they went not all at one. The big clock was five minutes
to twelve when the little watch was two minutes past. So he tried to
make them at one: but they would not. No, no! the big clock and the
little watch, they go their own way. Then said the Emperor, `Now I see
something I saw not aforetime. I thought I could make these clocks go
together, but no! Yet they are only the work of men like me. Ah, the
foolish man to think that I could compel men to think all alike, who are
the work of the great God.' You see?"

"If His Majesty had seen it a bit sooner," quoth _Hal_, "there should
have been spared some ill work both in _Spain_ and the Low Countries."

_Mynheer_ saith, "Ah!" more than once, and wagged his head right sadly.

"Why," quoth _Hal_, something earnestly, "mind you not, some dozen years
gone, of the stir was made all over this realm, when the ministers were
appointed to wear their surplices at all times of their ministration,
and no longer to minister in gowns ne cloaks, with their hat