tle caitiff. He was just knocked down by
this country lad's cap--happily not hurt. I told him you would give him
a tester for your bird."

"With all my heart!" and Dennet produced the coin. "Oh! Stephen, are
you sure he is safe? Thou bad Goldspot, to fly away from me! Wink with
thine eye--thou saucy rogue! Wottest thou not but for Stephen they
might be blinding thy sweet blue eyes with hot needles?"

"His wing is grown since the moulting," said Stephen. "It should be cut
to hinder such mischances."

"Will you do it? I will hold him," said Dennet.

"Ah! 'tis pity, the beauteous green gold-bedropped wing--that no armour
of thine can equal, Stephen, not even that for the little King of Scots.
But shouldst not be so silly a bird, Goldie, even though thou hast
thine excuse. There! Peck not, ill birdling. Know thy friends, Master
Stare."

And with such pretty nonsense the two stood together, Dennet in her
white cap, short crimson kirtle, little stiff collar, and white bib and
apron, holding her bird upside down in one hand, and with the other
trying to keep his angry beak from pecking Stephen, who, in his leathern
coat and apron, grimed, as well as his crisp black hair, with soot,
stood towering above her, stooping to hold out the lustrous wing with
one hand while he used his smallest pair of shears with the other to
clip the pen-feathers.

"See there, Master Alderman," cried Mistress Headley, bursting on him
from the gallery stairs. "Be that what you call fitting for your
daughter and your prentice, a beggar lad from the heath? I ever told
you she would bring you to shame, thus left to herself. And now you see
it."

Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this
objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and Dennet
flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, "O father, father! suffer
her not. He did no wrong. He was cutting my bird's wing."

"I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house," said the
alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it all
at once. "Stephen Birkenholt, come here."

Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in his
heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but imagining
at the moment that his feelings had been actions.

"Stephen," said the alderman, "thou art a true and worthy lad! Canst
thou love my daughter?"

"I--I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it,"