"'Why, Bon Bec, what is to do?' quoth he. 'I have made an ill bargain.
Oh, perverse heart, that turneth from doctrine.' So I bade him keep
his breath to cool his broth, ne'er would I shame my folk with singing
ribald songs. 'Then,' says he sulkily, 'the first fire we light by the
wayside, clap thou on the music box! so 'twill make our pot boil for the
nonce; but with your,

Good people, let us peak and pine,
Cut tristful mugs, and miaul and whine
Thorough our nosen chaunts divine,

never, never, never. Ye might as well go through Lorraine crying,
Mulleygrubs, Mulleygrubs, who'll buy my Mulleygrubs!' So we fared on,
bad friends. But I took a thought, and prayed him hum me one of his
naughty ditties again. Then he brightened, and broke forth into ribaldry
like a nightingale. Finger in ears stuffed I. 'No words; naught but the
bare melody.' For oh, Margaret, note the sly malice of the Evil One!
Still to the scurviest matter he wedded the tunablest ditties."

Catherine. "That is true as Holy Writ."

Sybrandt. "How know you that, mother?"

Cornelis. "He! he! he!"

Eli. "Whisht, ye uneasy wights, and let me hear the boy. He is wiser
than ye; wiser than his years."

"'What tomfoolery is this,' said he; yet he yielded to me, and soon I
garnered three of his melodies; but I would not let Cul de Jatte wot the
thing I meditated. 'Show not fools nor bairns unfinished work,' saith
the byword. And by this time 'twas night, and a little town at hand,
where we went each to his inn; for my master would not yield to put
off his rags and other sores till morning; nor I to enter an inn with
a tatterdemalion. So we were to meet on the road at peep of day, and
indeed, we still lodged apart, meeting at morn and parting at eve
outside each town we lay at. And waking at midnight and cogitating, good
thoughts came down to me, and sudden my heart was enlightened. I called
to mind that my Margaret had withstood the taking of the burgomaster's
purse. ''Tis theft,' said you; 'disguise it how ye will.' But I must
be wiser than my betters; and now that which I had as good as stolen,
others had stolen from me. As it came so it was gone. Then I said,
'Heaven is not cruel, but just;' and I vowed a vow, to repay our
burgomaster every shilling an' I could. And I went forth in the morning
sad, but hopeful. I felt lighter for the purse being gone. My master was
at the gate becrutched. I told him I'd liever have seen him in another