for I liked not the French jargon, although by dint of long suffering it
I had a better guess at the meaning of it often than I cared to own.

"Look, I say," said she, "would not she be a queen of beauty for the
knights of old to fight for?"

I looked where she pointed; and there, gliding within a few yards of us,
passed a boat, and in it, drinking in the beauty of the evening, sat a
maiden, at sight of whom I felt the blood desert my cheeks, and the hand
that held the book tremble. Her old companion was beside her dozing,
and the waterman lugged lazily at his oars, humming an air to himself.

Jeannette, happily, was looking not at me but at her, and so my troubled
looks escaped her.

"I never saw a face more fair," said she. "'Tis like a picture out of
Mr Chaucer's book. And now that she is past, the day seems darker. Go
on reading, please, kind Master Humphrey."

I tried to go on, but I blundered and lost my place, while my eyes tried
to follow the boat.

Would she but have looked round! Could she but have known who it was
that watched her! Could I myself have dared even to shout or call!

Alas! the boat glided by, and her form, stately, erect, fearless, lost
itself in the distance. What dreamed she--a queen--of an uncouth London
'prentice?

"Master Dexter," said Jeannette's soft voice presently, "for five whole
minutes you have been trying to read one little sentence, and it still
lacks an ending. What ails you?"

"Nothing, mistress; but I am a bad scholar and the words are hard; I
pray you forgive me. Besides it grows late. 'Tis time we went in."

So I carried her in to her mother, and then ran wildly back to the
river's edge, if by good hap I might see that lady return, or at least
catch sight of her boat in the far distance. But I did neither. The
tide still ran out, and amongst the many boats that dotted the water
citywards who was to say which was hers?

As I returned by way of the Temple to my master's house, I met Peter
Stoupe, my fellow 'prentice.

"I am glad I met thee," he said. "A man came to me just now in the shop
and said, 'Be you Humphrey Dexter?' I told him no, and asked him what
he wanted. He told me that was his business. I bade him wait where he
was and I would fetch you, for I had seen you go out; but he went away
grumbling, saying he would choose his own time, not mine. Alas!
Humphrey, you have brought us all into sad trouble by your naughty
ways."

"What troubl