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myself up in rooms with fine gallants—not I, by my troth! I never went nobody knows where, and stayed nobody knows how long, believe me! No! I was ever as discreet and modest as a virgin ought to be! that was I-and all the world knoweth it."

"Well, but what have you got to tell me, dame?” enquired Master Francis, rather earnestly.

"I be coming to it, kind heart,” replied Margery. "Now, had it been my good fortune, at her years, to have met with such a sweet young gentleman as yourself, methinks I should have cared for no other; but she-she must entertain gallants by the score! Not only, forsooth, must she have a parcel of famous fine fellows to fill her head with nonsensical notions about love and the like but she must needs have a few of meaner quality. Nay, for the matter of that, I do believe she be in no way particular. She liketh one as well as another, and careth only that there should be plenty of them. Would I have done such? I that was in such repute for the seriousness of my behaviour, that no man dared so much as meddle with my kirtle? In honest truth, it be but five and twenty years last Martinmas".

"But I have heard that before-I pray you, say at once what you have to tell me," said the youth, still more patiently.

"Ah! but forgot I had told you of it," continued the dame. 66 Well, then, to proceed. Often

have I, going up the stairs in the dark, stumbled over some fellow sneaking out-who'd been after no good, I'll be bound, by the suspicious manner of his getting away; and when I have come into the room suddenly, I have surprised her with some of her fine gallants sitting as close as you please to her-mayhap, with his villainous arm round her waist. Would I have done such? I that—but no matter. Then I have heard such whisperings in corners as were awful to listen to. And there was that Ralph Goshawk❞——

"What of him, dame?" enquired her companion, suddenly.

"Oh! the paltry fellow! Oh! the fustain rogue! I could never abide his presence," she added, as if in a monstrous indignation; "he would pass himself off for a gentleman, forsooth! and talk in as holiday terms as any lord: yet was he nothing but a trumpery haberdasher, who had no higher employment than the measuring out a yard or so of sad-coloured taffeta for some tapster's widow. He be the impudentest varlet :—but I will acquaint you with what he did, Master Francis, no longer ago than last week, and you shall judge him for an unmannerly knave, as he is, that hath no respect for the virtuousest of women. This was it. I was sitting in the low-backed arm-chair, that hath a cushion in it, by the side of the kitchen fire, mending of master's hose. I remember me, 'twas a pair

of blue hose; for having no worsted of that colour, I was obliged to go out as far as Jonathan Bodkin's, at the next corner, to get me a halfpenny ball. But you must needs know I be obliged to mend all master's hose, for she considereth herself too fine a lady to touch them;-and a famous labour be they, I do assure you, Master Francis, for master hath got a villainous fashion of wearing monstrous great holes in the heel, as big as a crown piece. Well, I was a putting in my stitches as closely as I might, when up comes this scurvy mealymouthed varlet, who had been sitting some two hours or more in the kitchen, talking the horriblest fustian to Joanna, about a certain Zenocrate (who was no better than she should be, I'll lay a wager, or she never could have tolerated such a paltry fellow as he is); and he says to me, in his thundering fine swaggering air,

'And if thou pitiest Tamburlane the Great,-
Tell us, old woman, what o'clock it be.'

Oh! the scurvy villain! Oh! the fustian rapscallion!" continued she, seemingly in as great a rage as she could well be in, "to call me an old woman!—me that am not fifty yet. He Tamburlane the Great! A poor paltry twopenny-halfpenny haberdasher!-a swaggering rogue !-a very trumpery fellow, that hath no more respect for virtue than he hath for a rotten apple. Oh! I be out of all patience with his shameless impudency!"

"But what have you seen in his behaviour to Joanna not proper in her to allow?" asked the youth, getting in some degree tired with the old woman's garrulousness.

"Seen!" exclaimed Margery, throwing up her hands and eyes, in amazement; "what is it I have not seen?" Then she came nearer to him, wearing a face of exceeding mysteriousness, and dropping her voice a little, added," I have seen him paddle with the palm of her hand in a way that was awful for to see. The paltry fellow! I have seen him give her the shockingest looks that eye ever lighted on. The scurvy villain! I have seen him so horribly familiar with her, that the like was never known in an honest house. The fustian rogue as he is, to call me an old woman! And as for her, instead of giving him such a setting down as might have put him to the blush for the villainousness of his conduct, as would I in such a case, she would sit smiling at him most abominably by the hour together;-nay, she hath actually got up to dance with him a gullard, and behaved with so thorough a wantonness, that I have oft been obliged to take myself off to bed, my virtue could no longer abide such infamous doings.

"But worse than that, Master Francis," continued the old woman, with increasing indignation, whilst the countenance of the youth exhibited considerable uneasiness; and coming closer, with a

look of greater mystery she added in a deep low voice," I have seen that which would make your hair stand on end to hear of;" then observing that his cheek became still paler, and his look more disturbed, she proceeded, first giving a cautious glance at the door:-"listen to me, and you shall hear all. Coming down stairs in the early morning to do the household work, I oft noticed, during this last winter, when I went to light the fire in this chamber, that there were live embers in the grate; which I knew could not have been unless a fire had been kept burning till within an hour or so of my coming down. From this I gathered that she set up o'nights. My chamber being nigh unto her's, put me upon keeping awake, to know for a certainty if such was the case. I listened and watched all the next night, and sure enough I heard my dainty madam creeping to her chamber, nigh unto six o'clock in the morning. The next thing was to discover what she set up for; for I hugely suspected she was not likely to sit up for nothing. But this was a hard matter to know, she being as close as a fox; so that there be no getting at what she be about. Yet had I known such things of her with that fustian rapscallion Ralph Goshawk, and others, that I was as good as certain she was after what she should not. Well, I kept a planning and scheming, in hopes of finding it all out, for I knew there was something villainous at

VOL. II.

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