arelled as
I, trow?"

"Be your garments not warm enough, Matthew?"

"Warm enough? certes! But they be only camoca and lamb's far, with
never a silver button, let be gold."

"What advantage should gold buttons be to you? Those pearl do attach
your gown full evenly as well."

"Hylton, thou hast no ambitiousness in thee! Seest not that folks
should pay me a deal more respect, thus donned [dressed] in my bravery?"

"That is, they should pay much respect to the blue velvet and the gold
buttons? You should be no different that I can see."

"I should be a vast sight comelier, man alive!"

"You!" returned Hylton.

"Where's the good of talking to thee? As well essay to learn a sparrow
to sing, `_J'ay tout perdu mon temps_.'"

"I think you should have lost your time in very deed, and your labour
belike, if you spent them on broidering gowns and stitching on buttons,
when you had enow aforetime."

"Thou sely loon! [Simple creature!] Dost reckon I mean to work mine
own broidery, trow? I'd have a fair score of maidens alway a-broidering
for me, so that I might ever have a fresh device when I lacked a new
gown."

"The which should come in a year to--how much?"

"Dost look for me to know?"

"I do, when I have told you. Above an hundred and twenty pound, Master
Matthew. That should your bravery cost you, in broidering-maids alone."

"Well! what matter, so I had it?"

"It might serve you. I should desire to buy more happiness with such a
sum than could be stitched into golden broidery and seed-pearl."

"Now come, Norman, let us hear thy notion of happiness. If thou hadst
in thine hand an hundred pound, what should'st do withal?"

"I would see if I could not dry up as many widows' tears as I had golden
pieces, and bring as many smiles to the lips of orphans as they should
divide into silver."

"Prithee, what good should that do thee?"

"It should keep mine heart warm in the chillest winter thereafter. But
I thought rather of the good it should do them than me."

"But what be such like folks to thee?"

"Our Lord died for them, and He is something to me."

"Fate meant thee for a monk, Hylton. Thou rannest thine head against
the wall to become a squire."

"Be monks the sole men that love God?"

"They be the sole men that hold such talk."

"I have known monks that held full different talk, I do ensure you. And
I have known laymen that loved God as well as any monk that ever paced
cloister."