oblins, that your lord and master is here? Peace, peace then,
you devils, and do not be hammering away at one another, but love each
other."

"It is the master!" exclaimed Gammer Gurton, lowering her fist in the
utmost contrition.

"Do not turn me away, sir!" moaned Hodge; "do not dismiss me from
your service because at last I have for once given the old hag a good
bruising. She has deserved it a long time, and an angel himself must at
last lose patience with her."

"I turn you out of my service!" exclaimed John Heywood, as he wiped his
eyes, wet with laughing. "No, Hodge, you are a real jewel, a mine of fun
and merriment; and you two have, without knowing it, furnished me with
the choicest materials for a piece which, by the king's order, I have
to write within six days. I owe you, then, many thanks, and will show
my gratitude forthwith. Listen well to me, my amorous and tender pair of
turtle-doves, and mark what I have to say to you. One cannot always tell
the wolf by his hide, for he sometimes put on a sheep's skin; and so,
too, a man cannot always be recognized by his voice, for he sometimes
borrows that of his neighbor. Thus, for example, I know a certain John
Heywood, who can mimic exactly the voice of a certain little miss
named Tib, and who knows how to warble as she herself: 'Hodge, my dear
Hodge!'" And he repeated to them exactly, and with the same tone and
expression, the words that the voice had previously cried.

"Ah, it was you, sir?" cried Hodge, with a broad grin--"that Tib in the
court there, that Tib about whom we have been pummelling each other?"

"I was Tib, Hodge--I who was present during the whole of your quarrel,
and found it hugely comical to send Tib's voice thundering into the
midst of our lovers' quarrel, like a cannon-stroke! Ah, ha! Hodge, that
was a fine bomb-shell, was it not? And as I said 'Hodge, my dear Hodge,'
you tumbled about like a kernel of corn which a dung-beetle blows with
his breath. No, no, my worthy and virtuous Gammer Gurton, it was not Tib
who called the handsome Hodge, and more than that, I saw Tib, as your
contest began, go out at the courtyard gate."

"It was not Tib!" exclaimed Gammer Gurton, much moved, and happy as love
could make her. "It was not Tib, and she was not in the court at
all, and Hodge could not then go down to her, while I went to the
shopkeeper's to buy needles. Oh, Hodge, Hodge, will you forgive me for
this; will you forget the hard words which I