], and his
portrait in little, and playing tables [backgammon], and speculation
glasses [probably magnifying glasses], and cinnamon water, and
sugar-candy, and fine _Venice_ paper for his letters, and
pouncet-boxes--"

"Take breath, _Ned_," saith _Father_. "How many letters doth _Wat_
write by the year?"

"They be love-letters, on the _Venice_ paper," quoth _Ned_. "In good
sooth, I wis not, Sir: only I saw them flying hither and thither as
thick as Mother _Carey's_ chickens."

"Is he troth-plight?" saith _Father_, very seriously.

"Not that I heard," _Ned_ makes answer. "He had two or three strings to
his bow, I guess. One a right handsome young lady, daughter unto my
Lord of _Sheffield_, that had taken up with him the new fashion called
_Euphuism_."

"Prithee interpret, _Ned_," saith _Father_, "for that passeth my weak
head."

I saw _Milly_ to blush, and cast down her eyes of her tapestry-work: and
I guessed she wist what it were.

"'Tis a rare diversion, Sir, come up of late," answers _Ned_: "whereby,
when a gentlewoman and a gentleman be in treaty of love,--or without the
same, being but friends--they do agree to call each other by certain
dainty and fantastical names: as the one shall be _Perfection_, and the
other _Hardihood_: or, the one _Sweetness_, and the other _Fortitude_:
and the like. I prayed _Wat_ to show me how it were, or else had I wist
no more than a baker how to reef a sail. The names whereby he and his
lady do call each other be, she his _Excellency_, and he her _Courage_."

"Be these men and women grown?" quoth _Father_.

"Nay, sure!" cries Cousin _Bess_.

"Every one, Sir," saith _Ned_, a-laughing.

"And, poor souls! can they find nought better to do?" quoth _Father_.

"They have not yet, it seems," saith Aunt _Joyce_.

"Are you ne'er mocking of us, think you?" saith Cousin _Bess_ to _Ned_.

"Never a whit!" crieth he. "Eh, Cousin _Bess_, I could tell you queerer
matters than that."

"Nay, I'll hear none, o' my good will," saith she. "_Paul_ saith we be
to think on whatsoever things be lovely: and I reckon he wasn't like to
mean on a parcel o' big babes, playing at make-believe."

"They have nought else to do, it appears," quoth _Father_.

"Dear heart!" saith she. "Could they ne'er buy a bale of flannel, and
make some doublets and petticoats for the poor? He must be a poor silly
companion that shall call a woman _Excellency_, when she hath done
nought all her life but