"Lack-a-day, what an acknowledgment from a man!" cries Aunt _Joyce_. "Yet 'tis fenced round, look you. `There is _some_ truth in _much_' I have said. Ah, go thy ways, my good _Aubrey_; thou art the best man ever I knew: but, alack! thou art a man, after all." "Why, Aunt _Joyce_," saith _Edith_, who was laughing rarely, "what should we do, think you, if there were no men?" "I would do some way, thou shouldst see," saith Aunt _Joyce_, sturdily. And so she let the matter drop; or should so have done, but _Nell_ saith-- "I reckon we all, both men and women, have in us a touch of our father, old _Adam_!" "And our mother, old _Eva_," said I. "You say well, childre," quoth Aunt _Joyce_: "and she that hath the biggest touch of any I know is a certain old woman of _Oxfordshire_, by name _Joyce Morrell_." Up springeth _Edith_, and giveth Aunt _Joyce_ a great hug. "She is the best, sweetest, dearest old woman (if so be) ever I knew," saith she. "I except not even _Mother_, for I count not her an old woman." Aunt _Joyce_ laughed, and paid _Edith_ back her hug with usury. Then, when _Edith_ was set down again to her work, Aunt _Joyce_ saith-- "_Anstace_ was wont to say--my _Anstace_, not yours, my maids--that she which did commonly put herself in the lowest place should the seldomest find her out of her reckoning." SELWICK HALL, FEBRUARY THE IX. Come Dr _Bell_ this morrow to let us blood, as is alway done of the spring-time. I do never love these blood-letting days, sith for a se'nnight after I do feel weak as water. But I reckon it must needs be, to keep away fever and plague and such like, the which should be worser than blood-letting a deal. All we were blooded, down to _Adam_; and Dr _Bell_ rode away, by sixteen shillings the richer man, which is a deal for a chirurgeon to earn but of one morrow. Aunt _Joyce_ saith she marvelleth if in time to come physicians cannot discover some herb or the like that shall purify folks' blood without having it run out of them like water from a tap. I would, if so be, that they might make haste and find the same. _Father_ hath writ to his cousin my Lord of _Oxenford_, praying him to give leave for _Wat_ to visit us at home. 'Tis four years sithence he were here; and _Father_ hath been wont to say that shall be a rare well-writ letter which shall (in common cases) do half the good of a talk face to face. I can see he is somewhat diseaseful touching _Wat_, lest he should slide into ill ways.