"In order to be like every one else, Aubrey, and not come in bad odour with his fellows, he spent well-nigh four hundred pound by the year, and--" "Uncle Walter!" cried Aubrey in amazement, and Lettice could have been his echo. "Ay!" said Edith, sadly. "And for over ten years thereafter was my father so crippled with his debts, that I mind it being a fine treat when I and my sisters had a new gown apiece, though of the commonest serge, and all but bare necessaries were cut off from our board. Walter laid it so to heart that of a spendthrift he became a miser. I would not have thee so to do, but I bid thee mind that we have very little to live on, owing all we yet have, and have brought withal, to the goodness of my dear Aunt Joyce; and if thou fall in such ways, Aubrey--" "Dear heart, Aunt! Think you I have no wit?" "Thou hast not an ill wit, my lad," said Aunt Temperance, "if a wise man had the keeping of it." "Temperance, you are so unfeeling!" exclaimed Faith. "Must I needs stand up for my fatherless boy?" "You'd ruin any lad you were mother to," answered her sister. Hans now coming in, she set on him. "Look here, Hans Floriszoon! Didst ever see any thing like this?" Hans smiled. "Oh ay, Mistress Murthwaite, I have seen men to use them." "Hast one of these fiddle-faddles thyself? or dost thou desire to have one?" "Neither, in good sooth," was his reply. "There, Mr Louvaine! hearken, prithee." "Hans is only a boy; I am a man," said Aubrey, loftily: though Hans was but a year younger than himself. "Lancaster and Derby! and are you then content, my Lord Man, that a contemptible boy should have better wit than your magnifical self? Truly, I think Hans was a man before thou hadst ended sucking of thy thumb." Just then Charity brought in the Rector. "See you here, Mr Marshall!" cried Temperance, brandishing her pipe. "Be you wont to solace your studies with this trumpery?" Mr Marshall smiled. "Truly, nay, Mistress Murthwaite; 'tis accounted scandalous for divines to use that tobago, not to name the high cost thereof." "Pray you, how many pence by the ounce hath any man the face to ask for this stinking stuff?" "Three shillings or more, and that the poorest sort." "Mercy me! And can you tell me how folks use it that account it physical?" "Ay, I have heard tell that the manner of using it as physic is to fill the patient's mouth with a ball of the leaves, when he must incline the face downward, and keep his mouth open, not moving his tongue: then doth it draw a flood of water from all parts of the body. Some physicians will not use it, saying it causeth over-quick digestion, and fills the stomach full of crudities. For a cold or headache the fumes of the pipe only are taken. His Majesty greatly loathes this new fashion, saying that the smoke thereof resembles nothing so much as the Stygian fume of the bottomless pit, and likewise that 'tis a branch of drunkenness, which he terms the root of all sins."