give," said the elder lady, rather peevishly.

"Then I can," said Reicht Heynes, showing herself in the doorway, with
colour somewhat heightened.

"So you have been hearkening all the time, eh?"

"What are my ears for, mistress?"

"True. Well, throw us the light of thy wisdom on this dark matter."

"There is no darkness that I see," said Reicht. "And the clue, why, an
ye call't a two-plye twine, and the ends on't in this room e'en now,
ye'll not be far out. Oh, mistress, I wonder at you sitting there
pretending."

"Marry, come up." and the mistress's cheek was now nearly as red as the
servant's. "So 'twas I drove the foolish girl away."

"You did your share, mistress. What sort of greeting gave you her
last time she came? Think you she could miss to notice it, and she all
friendless? And you said, 'I have altered my mind about painting of
you,' says you, a turning up your nose at her."

"I did not turn up my nose. It is not shaped like yours for looking
heavenward."

"Oh, all our nosen can follow our heartys bent, for that matter. Poor
soul. She did come into the kitchen to me. 'I am not to be painted now,'
said she, and the tears in her eyes. She said no more. But I knew well
what she did mean. I had seen ye."

"Well," said Margaret Van Eyck, "I do confess so much, and I make you
the judge, madam. Know that these young girls can do nothing of their
own heads, but are most apt at mimicking aught their sweethearts do. Now
your Gerard is reasonably handy at many things, and among the rest at
the illuminator's craft. And Margaret she is his pupil, and a patient
one: what marvel? having a woman's eye for colour, and eke a lover to
ape. 'Tis a trick I despise at heart: for by it the great art of colour,
which should be royal, aspiring, and free, becomes a poor slave to the
petty crafts of writing and printing, and is fettered, imprisoned, and
made little, body and soul, to match the littleness of books, and go to
church in a rich fool's pocket. Natheless affection rules us all, and
when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and
ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the
scum of Nature-stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and
withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred
and fifty, or two hundred hours over each singular page, certes I was
wroth that an immortal soul, and many hours of labour, and much manual
skill, should be