"Right, my lad," saith _Father_. "Speak the truth, and let come of it what will. But, in very deed, we must come to it, _Wat_. This matter is like those wounds that 'tis no good to heal ere they be probed. Nor knew I ever a chirurgeon to use the probe without hurting of his patient. Howbeit, _Wat_, I will not hurt thee more than is need. Tell me, dost thou think that all thy costs, of whatsoever kind, should go into two hundred pound by the year?" The red flush on _Wat's_ brow grew deeper. "I am afeared not, Sir," he made answer, of a low voice. "Should they go into three?" _Wat_ hesitated, but seemed more diseased [uncomfortable] than ever. "Should four overlap them?" _Wat_ brake forth. "_Father_, I would you would scold me--I cannot stand it! I should feel an hard whipping by far less than your terrible gentleness. I know I have been a downright fool, and I have known it all the time: but what is a man to do? The fellows laugh at you if you do not as all the rest. Then they come to one every day, with, `Here, _Louvaine_, lend me a sovereign,'--and `Look you, _Louvaine_, pay this bill for me,'--and they should reckon you the shabbiest companion ever lived, if you did it not, or if, having done it, you should ask them for it again." "_Wat_!" saith Aunt _Joyce_ from the window. "What so, _Aunt_?" quoth he. "Stand up a minute, and let me look at thee," saith she. _Walter_ did so, but with a look as though he marvelled what Aunt _Joyce_ would be at. "I would judge from thy face," quoth she, "if thou art the right lad come, or they have changed thee in _London_ town. Our _Walter_ used to have his father's eyes and his mother's mouth. Well, I suppose thou art: but I should scantly have guessed it from thy talk." "_Walter_," softly saith _Mother_, "thy father should never have so dealt when he were of thy years." "Lack-a-daisy! I would have thought the world was turning round," quoth Aunt _Joyce_, "had I ever heard such a speech of _Aubrey_ at any years whatsoever." _Father_ listed this with some diversion, as methought from the set of his lips. "Well, I am not as good as _Father_," saith _Wat_. "Amen!" quoth Aunt _Joyce_. "But, _Aunt_, you are hard on a man. See you not, all the fellows think you a coward if you dare not spend freely and act boldly? Ay, and a miser belike." "Is it worser to be thought a coward than to be one?" saith _Father_. "Who be `all the fellows'?" saith Aunt _Joyce_. "My Lord of _Burleigh_ and my Lord _Hunsdon_ and Sir _Francis Walsingham_, I'll warrant you." "Now, _Aunt_!" saith _Walter_. "Not grave old men like they! My Lord of _Oxenford_, that is best-dressed man of all the Court, and spendeth an hundred pound by the year in gloves and perfumes only--" "Eh, _Wat_!" cries _Helen_: and _Mother_,--"_Walter_, my dear boy!"