He came up from below presently, and I was ready for him. "Master,"
said I, "I have displeased you against my will, and I have seen what you
would fain have kept a secret. You shall find it remains safe with me,
for I am your 'prentice and bound to you. Therefore cheer up."

He brightened at this.

"You are a good lad," said he. "It concerns no one what I do below.
'Tis an amusement of my own, no more."

As he stood there, pale and anxious, with weary eyes, it seemed to me an
amusement which yielded him but little sport. However, I did not
dispute the matter, and we said no more about it.

But after that day I observed that my master, although he seemed to like
me less, was more sparing of his bitter words than heretofore. Whereby
I guessed plainly enough that the amusement he spoke of, were it to come
to the ears of the Master and Wardens of the Company, would get him into
no little trouble.

Mistress Walgrave, his wife, as I said, was ever my good friend. She
was no common woman, and how those two made a match of it always puzzled
me. Before she came to England (so she had told me often), she lived at
Rochelle, in France, where her first husband was a merchant in lace.
Then, when he died of the plague ten years ago, she came with her two
young children (the elder being but five years), to her mother's home in
Kent, where Robert Walgrave, being on a visit to Canterbury, met her,
and offered her marriage. And in truth she had been the brightness of
his house ever since, and her two French children, Jeannette and
Prosper, now tall girl and boy, lived with her, as did some three other
urchins who called Master Walgrave father. Sweet Jeannette was my
favourite; for she was lame, and had her mother's cheery smile, and
thought ill of no one, least of all of me whom she called her big
crutch, and tormented by talking French.

Many a summer afternoon, when work was slack, I carried her to the
water-side, where she might sit and watch the river flowing past. And
to reward me she made me read her about King Arthur and his knights, and
stories from Mr Chaucer's book; much of which I understood not, though
(being a printer's 'prentice), I knew the words.

One still evening as we sat thus, not a week after my adventure in
Finsbury Fields, she broke in on my reading with--

"_Voila_, see there, Master Humphrey; _mais, comme elle est jolie_!"

"I don't know what you say, when you talk like that, mistress," said I;