observed that ye affected her.'

'Why, she likes me well. She is a good wench--and to-day she tore my
hair.'

'Then that is along of a man?' he asked. 'Didst not stick thy needle in
her arm? Or wilto be quit of her?'

She rubbed her chin.

'Why, if she wed, I mun be quit of her,' she said, as if she had never
thought of that thing.

He answered--

'Assuredly; for ye may not part man and lawful wife were you seven times
Queen.'

'Why,' she said, 'I have little pleasure in Margot as she is.'

'Then let her go,' he answered.

'But I am a very lonely Queen,' she said, 'for you are much absent.'

He reflected pleasurably.

'Thee wouldst have about thee a little company of well-wishers?'

'So that they be those thou lovest well,' she said.

'Why, thy maid contents me,' he answered. He reflected slowly. 'We must
give her man a post about thee,' he uttered triumphantly.

'Why, trust thee to pleasure me,' she said. 'You will find out a way
always.'

He scrubbed her nose gently with his heavy finger.

'Who is the man?' he said. 'What ruffler?'

'I think it is the Magister Udal,' she answered.

Henry said--

'Oh ho! oh ho!' And after a moment he slapped his thigh and laughed like
a child. She laughed with him, silverly upon a little sound between 'ah'
and 'e.' He stopped his laugh to listen to hers, and then he said
gravely--

'I think your laugh is the prettiest sound I ever heard. I would give
thy maid Margot a score of husbands to make thee laugh.'

'One is enough to make her weep,' she said; 'and I may laugh at thee.'

He said--

'Let us finish this business within the hour. Sit you upon your chair
that I may call one to send this ruffler here.'

She rose, with one sinuous motion that pleased him well, half to her
feet and, feeling behind her with one hand for the chair, aided herself
with the other upon his shoulder because she knew that it gave him joy
to be her prop.

'Call the maid, too,' she said, 'for I would come to the secret soon.'

That pleased him too, and, having shouted for a knave he once more shook
with laughter.

'Oh ho,' he said, 'you will net this old fox, will you?'

And, having sent his messenger off to summon the Magister from the Lady
Mary's room, and the maid from the Queen's, he continued for a while to
soliloquise as to Udal's predicament. For he had heard the Magister rail
against matrimony in Latin hexameters and doggerel Greek. He knew that
the Magister was an i