I hesitated to reply, for leaving the few scraps of Latin and logick that Master Jordan had been at such pains to drive into me and I had as easy let slip again, my studies had been woefully neglected, or rather I had profited by them so little, that there was nothing I knew anyways whole. I stammered out at last that what I could do, I doubted would scarce earn me a scavenger's wages, and looked (I suppose) so glum, that Idonia laughed outright. "Come, there be books of account," said she, "can you not make shift to cast moneys in figure?" I told her I thought I might compass that if I were given time enough; though for that matter I did not see how I was like greatly to profit the merchant that should employ me. But without replying by so much as a word, Idonia went over to an oaken press by the stair, presently returning with a soiled leathern volume clasped with a deal of brass and so heavy as to be hardly portable. This she set open before me saying it was a record of trade done, and had belonged to one Mr. Enos Procter, whom she knew, and bade me read in it. "Lord!" said I, very grave, for I had never seen so intricate and mysterious a labyrinth of words and cyphers as she then discovered. "If Dives the rich man got his wealth that way, I suppose his life to have been something less easy than our divines would have us believe." "It is a ledger-book," said Idonia. "Let it be what it will," said I, "it is more than I bargained for." "Nay, but observe this superscription," she went on, eagerly, "where it commenceth as is customary: _Laus Deo_ in London, and so following." She ran her finger along the line commenting with a facility that astonished me. "This is the accompt of one Mendoza, as you see, a wool-stapler of Antwerp, and as the Jews ever be, a punctual man of his money. Look you, now, how differently this other sets to work, Jacob Hornebolt of Amsterdam, and with what gross irregularity he transmitteth his bills of exchange ... nay, here, I mean, upon the Creditor side," cried she, for my eyes ran hither and thither, up and down the page, like any Jack-apparitor, in quest of her accursed Dutch Jacob and his pestilent bills. "Oh, a truce to this," quoth I, "or else turn o'er to a page where a man's doings be set down in fair Queen's English, and not in such crabbed and alchemist terms as one must have gone to school to the Black Witch that should understand 'em. You point me here and you point me there, and there's Creditor this and Debitor that, with an whole history between them, good lack! mistress, but it makes my head reel to hear tell of." "I had thought you understood me," said she very simply. "Then 'tis time you understood I did not," said I, roundly, "and what's more I think you should not neither. It is not maidenly reading;" and indeed I was staggered that so much of a man's actions should lie open to any girl's eye that had the trick of cyphers, to peruse them.