gner; and when he was told it was to a friend of
Tibble's, only shook his head, saying that Tib's only fault was dabbling
in matters of divinity, as if a plain man could not be saved without
them! However, he respected the lad for having known his own mind and
not hung about in idleness, and he had no opinion of clerks, whether
monks or priests. Indeed, the low esteem in which the clergy as a class
were held in London was one of the very evil signs of the times.
Ambrose was invited to dine and sup at the Dragon court every Sunday and
holiday, and he was glad to accept, since the hospitality was so free,
and he thus was able to see his brother and Tibble; besides that, it
prevented him from burthening Mistress Randall, whom he really liked,
though he could not see her husband, either in his motley or his plain
garments, without a shudder of repulsion.

Ambrose found that setting up type had not much more to do with the
study of new books than Stephen's turning the grindstone had with
fighting in the lists; and the mistakes he made in spelling from right
to left, and in confounding the letters, made him despair, and prepare
for any amount of just indignation from his master; but he found on the
contrary that Master Hansen had never had a pupil who made so few
blunders on the first trial, and augured well of him from such a
beginning. Paper was too costly, and pressure too difficult, for many
proofs to be struck off, but Hansen could read and correct his type as
it stood, and assured Ambrose that practice would soon give him the same
power; and the correction was thus completed, when Will Wherry, a big,
stout fellow, came in to dinner--the stall being left during that time,
as nobody came for books during the dinner-hour, and Hansen, having an
understanding with his next neighbour, by which they took turns to keep
guard against thieves.

The master and the two lads dined together on the contents of a
cauldron, where pease and pork had been simmering together on the stove
all the morning. Their strength was then united to work the press and
strike off a sheet, which the master scanned, finding only one error in
it. It was a portion of Lilly's _Grammar_, and Ambrose regarded it with
mingled pride and delight, though he longed to go further into those
deeper revelations for the sake of which he had come here.

Master Hansen then left the youths to strike off a couple of hundred
sheets, after which they were to wash the