sampler on a stool by her
grandmother, under penalty of being sent off to bed if she disturbed her
father, sprang up with a little cry of gladness, and running up to
Ambrose, entreated for the tales of his good greenwood Forest, and the
pucks and pixies, and the girl who daily shared her breakfast with a
snake and said, "Eat your own side, Speckleback." Somehow, on Sunday
night she had gathered that Ambrose had a store of such tales, and she
dragged him off to the gallery, there to revel in them, while his
brother remained with her father.

Though Master Stephen had begun by being high and mighty about
mechanical crafts, and thought it a great condescension to consent to be
bound apprentice, yet when once again in the Dragon court, it looked so
friendly and felt so much like a home that he found himself very anxious
that Master Headley should not say that he could take no more
apprentices at present, and that he should be satisfied with the terms
uncle Hal would propose. And oh! suppose Tibble should recognise
Quipsome Hal!

However, Tibble was at this moment entirely engrossed by the accounts,
and his master left him and his big companion to unravel them, while he
himself held speech with his guest at some distance--sending for a cup
of sack, wherewith to enliven the conversation.

He showed himself quite satisfied with what Randall chose to tell of
himself as a well known "housekeeper" close to the Temple, his wife a
"lavender" there, while he himself was attached to the suite of the
Archbishop of York. Here alone was there any approach to shuffling, for
Master Headley was left to suppose that Randall attended Wolsey in his
capacity of king's counsellor, and therefore, having a house of his own,
had not been found in the roll of the domestic retainers and servants.
He did not think of inquiring further, the more so as Randall was
perfectly candid as to his own inferiority of birth to the Birkenholt
family, and the circumstances under which he had left the Forest.

Master Headley professed to be quite willing to accept Stephen as an
apprentice, with or without a fee; but he agreed with Randall that it
would be much better not to expose him to having it cast in his teeth
that he was accepted out of charity; and Randall undertook to get a
letter so written and conveyed to John Birkenholt that he should not
dare to withhold the needful sum, in earnest of which Master Headley
would accept the two crowns that Stephe