to thyself, not to other
folk," saith Aunt _Joyce_. "Thou shouldst be right well content of a
board for thy bed, but if any one of us had the blanket creased under
our backs, it should cost thee thy night's rest. I know thee, _Bess
Wolvercot_."

"Well, and I do dearly love to see folk comfortable," quoth she. "As
for me, what recketh? I thank the Lord, my health is good enough; and a
very fool were I to grumble at every bit of discomfort. Why, only do
think, Mistress _Joyce_, how much worser I might have been off! Had I
been born of that country I heard Master _Banaster_ a-telling of, where
they never see the sun but of the summer, and dwell of huts full o'
smoke, with ne'er a chimney--why, I never could see if my face were
clean, nor my table rubbed bright. Eh, but I wouldn't like that fashion
of living!"

"They have no tables in _Greenland_ for to rub, _Bess_," quoth _Hal_.

"Nor o'er many clean faces, I take it," saith _Father_.

"Ah! did you hear, Sir," saith _Mynheer_, "of Mynheer _Heningsen's_
voyage to _Greenland_ the last year?"

"I have not, _Mynheer_," saith _Father_. "Pray you, what was notable
therein?"

"Ah! he was not far from the coast of _Greenland_, when he found the
ship go out of her course. He turned the rudder, or how you say, to
guide the ship--I am not sea-learned, I ask your pardon if I mistake--
but the ship would not move. Then they found, beneath a sunken rock,
and it was--how you say?--magnetical, that drew to it the iron of the
ship. Then Mynheer _Heningsen_, he look to his charts, for he know no
rock just there. And what think you he found? Why, two hundred years
back, exactly--in the year of our Lord 1380, there were certain
_Venetians_, the brothers _Zeni_, sailing in these seas, and they
brought word home to _Venice_ that on this very spot, where _Heningsen_
found nothing but a sunken rock, they found a beautiful large island,
where were one hundred villages, inhabited by _Christian_ people, in a
state of great civility [civilisation], but so simple and guileless that
hardly you can conceive. Think you! nothing now but a sunken rock."

"But what name hath the island?" asks _Hal_.

"No name at all. No eyes ever saw it but the brothers _Zeni_ of
_Venice_."

"Nay, _Mynheer_, I cry you mercy," saith _Father_ of his thoughtful
fashion. "If the brothers _Zeni_ told truth (as I mean to signify no
doubt), there was One that saw it, from the time when He pronounced all