"Truly, Madam, I have not yet made the inquiration. My Lady is at this time full of business, and seeing my friends were away, I thought you should not require haste." Aubrey's conscience stirred a little uneasily, and he said to it, "Be quiet! I have not told any falsehood." "I would not have you to chafe your Lady, if she have no time to listen," said Lady Louvaine, with a disappointed look: "but indeed, Aubrey, the matter must be seen to, and not done by halves, moreover." A rap at the door preceded Charity, who came to announce Mrs Abbott--a ceremony always used at the White Bear, but entirely unnecessary in the eyes of the lady of the Angel. "Well, what think you?" she began, before her greetings were well over; for Mistress Abbott was a genuine Athenian, who spent all her leisure hours, and some hours when she should not have been at leisure, in first gathering information, and then retailing it, not having any special care to ascertain its accuracy. "Well, what think you? Here be three of our neighbours to be presented by the street wardens--Lewce, the baker, for that they cannot keep his pigs out of the King's Street; Joan Cotton the silkwoman as a sower of strife amongst her neighbours; and Adrian Sewell for unlawfully following the trade of a tailor." "Why, that is thy tailor, Aubrey!" exclaimed Aunt Temperance. "I trust thou art not deep in his books?" "Never a whit, Aunt; I owe him ne'er a penny," said Aubrey, flushing, and not adding that Mr William Patrick's books were separate volumes, nor that those of Nathan Cohen, in Knightriders' Street, were not entirely guiltless of his name. "Ay, that's the way," said Mrs Abbott, nodding her head. "Pay as you go, and keep from small scores. Truly I would, Mr Louvaine, our Stephen were as wise as you. Such a bill as came in this week past from a silkman in Paternoster Row! White satin collars at eight and ten shillings the piece, and a doublet of the same at two pound; curled feathers, and velvet doublets, and perfumed gloves at twenty pence or more. His father's in a heavy taking, I can tell you, and saith he shall be ruined. Look you, we've four lads, and here's Stephen a-going this path--and if Seth and Caleb and Ben just go along after Stephen, it'll be a fine kettle o' fish, I can tell you. Oh dear, but you've a deal to be thankful for, and only one to trouble you! The bicker those lads do make!" "We have all something wherefore we may be thankful, friend," said Lady Louvaine gently, when Mrs Abbott stopped to breathe. "Well, then, there's the maids--Mall, and Silence, and Prissy, and Dorcas, and Hester--and I can promise you, they make such a racket amongst 'em, I'm very nigh worn to a shadow." Aubrey and Lettice were giving funny glances at each other, and doing their utmost not to disgrace the family by laughing. If Mrs Abbott were worn to a shadow, shadows were very portly and substantial articles.