y, this is courtship,' the old man answered. His head leaned
forward with a birdlike intentness; he listened with one hand held out
as if to still any sound in the room. They heard footsteps from the
floor above, a laugh and voices. 'Now Margot talks to him from her
window.'

The printer had a motion of convulsed rage:

'I will break that knave's spine across my knee.'

'Nay, let be,' the old man said. 'I command thee, who am thy father,
to let the matter be.'

'Would you have him ...' the printer began with a snarl.

'I would not have my house burnt down because this Cromwell's spy's
body should be found upon our hands.... To-morrow the wench shall be
sent to her aunt Wardle in Bedfordshire--aye, and she shall be soundly
beaten to teach her to love virtue.'

The young man opened the house door and came in, shivering in his
scarlet because he had run out without his cloak.

'A pretty medley you have made,' he said to his uncle, 'but I have
calmed him. Wherefore should not this magister marry Margot?' He made
again for the fire. 'Are we to smell always of ink?' He looked
disdainfully at his uncle's proofs, and began to speak with a boy's
seriousness and ingenuous confidence. They would tell his uncle at
Court that if good print be the body of a book, good learning is even
the soul of it. At Court he would learn that it is thought this
magister shall rise high. There good learning is much prized. Their
Lord the King had been seen to talk and laugh with this magister. 'For
our gracious lord loveth good letters. He is in such matters skilled
beyond all others in the realm.'

The old man listened to his grandson, smiling maliciously and with
pride; the printer shrugged his shoulders bitterly; the muffled sounds
and the voices through the house-end continued, and the boy talked on,
laying down the law valiantly and with a cheerful voice.... He would
gain advancement at Court through his sister's marriage with the
magister.

Going back to the palace at Greenwich along with the magister, in the
barge that was taking the heralds to the King's marriage with Anne of
Cleves, the young Poins was importunate with Udal to advance him in
his knowledge of the Italian tongue. He thought that in the books of
the Sieur Macchiavelli upon armies and the bearing of arms there were
unfolded many secret passes with the rapier and the stiletto. But Udal
laughed good-humouredly. He had, he said, little skill in the Italian
tongue, for