having been made
Lord Chancellor, and he was a very just man, so he would never let his
wife take what did not belong to her. He went, therefore, into his own
great hall and sent for Lady More; then he asked her to stand at the
top end of the hall, and placed the little dirty girl down at the lower
end. Then he ordered a footman to bring in the dog and hold it in the
middle between the two, and he said that the dog should decide for
itself; it must know its own mistress. And when he gave the word the man
must let it go, and both the women who claimed to be its mistress must
call it, and whichever it chose to go to should keep it.

So he gave the word, and Lady More cried out all the soft things she
could think of; but the little girl just said the one word, the dog's
name, and the dog bounded toward her in a moment, for it loved her, and
did not care for Lady More. So Sir Thomas said that settled it; the dog
clearly belonged to the little girl and not to his wife. Lady More then
offered the girl much money if she would sell the dog, and as she was
very poor she did sell it at last, and left it behind with its new
mistress.

There were always a great many people coming and going in More's house,
and the table was always laden with good things, and much money was
spent; but Sir Thomas himself did not care about eating and drinking,
and liked best to have only vegetables and fruit and brown bread, and
perhaps a little salt beef, which was much eaten in England then.

Every day he said good-bye to his little girls, and told them to be good
at their lessons, and then he went off in his barge up the river to the
Court.

The two elder girls, Meg and Elizabeth, learned very difficult things;
but Cicely and little John were not so clever. John seems to have been
rather a stupid boy. It is said that the first Mrs. More wanted a boy
very much, and when he came and grew a little, and they found he would
never be very clever, More said: 'Thou hast wanted a boy, and now thou
wilt have one that will be a boy all his life.'

In the evenings, when the barge came sweeping up the river, no doubt the
girls watched for it, and ran to greet their father, and then they would
all go in together to the house. Perhaps he had brought with him some
clever and learned men who were his friends from London, or a young
Dutch painter called Holbein, who was hardly at all known then, but is
now counted among the greatest painters in the world.

S