die for lack of good letters. I that no day in my life have
passed--_nulla die sine_--no day without reading five hours in goodly
books since I was six and breeched. Bethink you, you that love
learning----'

'Now tell me,' Cicely Elliott cried out, 'which would you rather in your
cell--the Letters of Cicero or a kitchen wench?'

The Queen bade her hold her peace, and to the Magister she uttered--

'Books I will have sent you, for I think it well that you should be so
well employed. And, for your future, I will have you set down in a
monastery where there shall be for you much learning and none of my sex.
You have done harm enow! Now, get you gone!'

He sighed that she had grown so stern, and she was glad to be rid of
him. But he had not been gone a minute into the other room when there
arose such a clamour of harsh voices and shrieks and laughter that she
threw her door open, coming to it herself before the other ladies could
close their mouths, which had opened in amazement.

The young Poins was beating the Magister, so that the fur gown made a
greyish whirl about his scarlet suit in the midst of a tangle of spun
wool; spinning wheels were overset, Margot Poins crashed around upon
them, wailing; the girls with their distaffs were crouching against the
window-places and in corners, crying out each one of them.

The Queen had a single little gesture of the hand with which she
dismissed all her waiting-women. She stood alone in the inner doorway
with the Lady Cicely and the Lady Rochford behind her. The Lady Rochford
wrung her gouty hands; the Lady Cicely set back her head and laughed.

The Queen spoke no word, but in the new silence it was as if the
Magister fell out of the boy's hands. He staggered amidst the trails of
wool, nearly fell, and then made stiff zigzags towards the open outer
door, where his prison guards awaited him, since they had no warrant to
enter the antechamber. He dragged after him a little trail of fragments
of spinning wheels and spindles.

'Well, there's a fine roister-doister!' the Lady Cicely laughed behind
the Queen's back. The Queen stood very still and frowned. To her the
disturbance was monstrous and distasteful, for she was minded to have
things very orderly and quiet. The boy, in his scarlet, pulled off his
bonnet and panted, but he was not still more than a second, and suddenly
he called out to the Queen--

'Make that pynot to marry my sister!'

Margot Poins hung round him and