s and Sandwich.'

'Yet she comes ten days late.'

'Oh moody and suspicious artificer. _Afflavit deus!_ The wind hath
blown dead against Calais shore this ten days.'

The old man pulled his long white nose:

'In my day we could pray to St Leonard for a fair wind.'

He was too old to care whether the magister reported his words to
Thomas Cromwell, the terrible Lord Privy Seal, and too sardonic to
keep silence for long about the inferiority of his present day.

'When shall I teach the fair Margot the learned tongue?' Udal asked
again.

'When wolves teach conies how to play on pipes,' the master printer
snarled from his chest.

'The Lord Privy Seal never stood higher,' Udal said. 'The match with
the Cleves Lady hath gained him great honour.'

'God cement it!' the printer said fervently.

The old man pulled at his nose and gazed at nothing.

'I am tired with this chatter of the woman from Cleves,' he croaked,
like a malevolent raven. 'An Anne she is, and a Lutheran. I mind we
had an Anne and a Lutheran for Queen before. She played the whore and
lost her head.'

'Where's your niece Margot?' Udal asked the printer.

'You owe me nine crowns,' the old man said.

'I will give your Margot ten crowns' worth of lessons in Latin.'

'Hold and enough,' the printer muttered heavily. 'Tags from Seneca in
a wench's mouth are rose garlands on a cow's horns.'

'The best ladies in the land learn of me,' Udal answered.

'Aye, but my niece shall keep her virtue intact.'

'You defame the Lady Mary of England,' Udal snickered.

The old man said vigorously, 'God save her highness, and send us her
for Queen. Have you begged her to get me redress in the matter of that
wall?'

'Why, Providence was kind to her when it sent her me for her master,'
Udal said. 'I never had apter pupil saving only one.'

'Shall Thomas Cromwell redress?' the old man asked.

'If good learning can make a good queen, trust me to render her one,'
Udal avoided the question. 'But alas! being declared bastard--for very
excellent reasons--she may not----'

'You owe me nine crowns,' old Badge threatened him. He picked
irritably at the fur on his gown and gazed at the carved leg of the
table. 'If you will not induce Privy Seal to pull down his wall I will
set the tipstaves on you.'

Master Udal laughed. 'I will give thy daughter ten crowns' worth of
lessons in the learned tongues.'

'You will receive another broken crown, magister,' the younger John