"It shall be better spent," said I. "But 'tis not enough by the half," quoth she. "Well, we will eke out the rest by other ways, of which I have a store in my head, that, being happily vacant of wits, hath the more room to accommodate them." Idonia's answer to this, I, having considered the matter, pass over as foreign to the argument. 'Twas a little after, that starting up, she cried: "Why, bless my dull appetite, we have not dined! And I with a fat hen upon the spit, fresh from the Cheape this morning." "'Tis not enough by the half," said I, mocking her; but she would not stay longer, saying I must eat, for I had a big body to fill; though for my head, that was another song and a sad one; and ere I could let her, she was gone from me into the great kitchen beyond the stair. I sat awhile where I was, marvellous happy and free from cares; and saw my love of this maid, like a new Creation arising from the waters, to make a whole world for me where before was nothing; for all seemed to me as nothing in comparison with her, so that I forgot my troubles and losses, my wounds and sickness, my father, my home, my uncle... "What was that?" said I, sitting up straight, for I had, I think, fallen into a sort of trance, and imagined some noise had disturbed me. "Hist!" came a whisper from aloft, and I leapt to my feet. "Who is it speaks?" cried I, searching every corner of the dark hall with narrowed eyes. "Hist!" said the voice again. "There is danger threatening to the folk of this house." "What danger is there?" said I, who had now discovered who it was spoke; for there, lurking in the aperture of the wall to which the ladder reached up, I saw Andrew Plat, the lyrick poet, his tawny hair wild about his pale face, and his neck craned forward like a heron's. Yet for all the comick figure that he made I could not neglect the apparent seriousness of his warning, and especially when he added in a hoarse voice-- "Where is Mistress Avenon? O, fair Idonia, hasten hither, if you be within this fated mansion!" "She is in the kitchen cooking a fowl," said I, pretty short, for this adjuration of his mightily displeased me. "Cooking!--she!" returned the poet, with a despairing gesture. "Her lily hands! O monstrous indignity, and cruel office of a cook!" I had thought he would fall headlong down the ladder, so distractedly did he behave himself, and called upon him sharply to tell me wherein lay this danger to Idonia he affected to fear. "I stand alone against a host," said he with a flourish, "but Love maketh a man sufficient, and will fortify these arms." "Enough," I shouted, "or I will assuredly call in question the authorship of a certain rascal poem you wot of."