' worth, and drink into the bargain. The
pardoners are my good friends, but palmers and pilgrims, what think you
I gain by them? marry, a loss. Minstrels and jongleurs draw custom and
so claim to pay no score, except for liquor. By the secular monks I
neither gain nor lose, but the black and grey friars have made vow
of poverty, but not of famine; eat like wolves and give the poor host
nought but their prayers; and mayhap not them: how can he tell? In my
father's day we had the weddings; but now the great gentry let their
houses and their plates, their mugs and their spoons to any honest
couple that want to wed, and thither the very mechanics go with their
brides and bridal train. They come not to us: indeed we could not find
seats and vessels for such a crowd as eat and drink and dance the week
out at the homeliest wedding now. In my father's day the great gentry
sold wine by the barrel only; but now they have leave to cry it, and
sell it by the galopin, in the very market-place. How can we vie with
them? They grow it. We buy it of the grower. The coroner's quests we
have still, and these would bring goodly profit, but the meat is aye
gone ere the mouths be full."

"You should make better provision," suggested his hearer.

"The law will not let us. We are forbidden to go into the market for
the first hour. So, when we arrive, the burghers have bought all but the
refuse. Besides, the law forbids us to buy more than three bushels
of meal at a time: yet market day comes but once a week. As for the
butchers, they will not kill for us unless we bribe them."

"Courage!" said Gerard kindly, "the shoe pinches every trader
somewhere."

"Ay: but not as it pinches us. Our shoe is trode all o' one side as well
as pinches us lame. A savoir, if we pay not the merchants we buy meal,
meat, and wine of, they can cast us into prison and keep us there till
we pay or die. But we cannot cast into prison those who buy those very
victuals of us. A traveller's horse we may keep for his debt; but where,
in Heaven's name? In our own stable, eating his head off at our cost.
Nay, we may keep the traveller himself; but where? In gaol? Nay, in
our own good house, and there must we lodge and feed him gratis. And so
fling good silver after bad? Merci; no: let him go with a wanion. Our
honestest customers are the thieves. Would to Heaven there were more of
them. They look not too close into the shape of the canakin, nor into
the host's reckoning: