_Helen_ laughed now, and quoth she,--"I thank you much, _Mynheer_, though I am 'feared you reckon mine understanding higher than it demerit: yet I fear there shall scantly be opportunity this morrow. I have divers dishes to cook that shall be cold for this even, and a deal of flannel-work to do." "Ah, the dishes and the flannel, they are mine abhorrence!" saith _Mynheer_. "They stand alway in the road of the learning." "Nay, mine old _paedagogus_!" crieth _Ned_. "I reckon the dishes are little your abhorrence at supper-time, nor the flannel of a cold night, when it taketh the form of blankets. 'Tis right well to uphold the learning, yet without _Nell's_ cates and flannel, your _Latin_ should come ill off." "The body is ever in the way of the soul!" saith _Mynheer_. "Were we souls without bodies, what need had we of the puddings and the flannels?" "Or the _Latin_," sticketh in _Ned_, mischievously. _Mynheer_ wagged his head at _Ned_. "_Edward Van Louvaine_, thou wist better." "Few folks but know better than they do, _Mynheer_," saith _Ned_. "Yet think you there shall be lexicons needed to talk with King _David_ or the Apostle _Paul_ hereafter?" "I trow not," saith _Father_. "Dear heart, Master _Stuyvesant_," cries Cousin _Bess_, "but sure the curse of _Babel_ was an ill thing all o'er! You would seem to count it had a silver side to it." "It had a golden side, my mistress," made he answer. "Had all men ever spoken but one tongue, the _paedagogus_ should scarce be needed, and half the delights of learning had disappeared from the earth." "Eh, lack-a-day!--but how different can folks look at matters!" saith Cousin _Bess_. "Why, I have alway thought it should be a rare jolly thing when all strange tongues were done away (as I reckon they shall hereafter), and all folks spake but plain _English_." "Art so sure it should be _English_, _Bess_?" saith _Father_, smiling. "What an' it were _Italian_ or _Greek_?" "Good lack, that could never be!" crieth she. "Why, do but think the trouble all men should have." "Somebody must have it," quoth he. "I take it, what so were the tongue, all nations but one should have to learn it." "I'll not credit it, Sir _Aubrey_," crieth _Bess_, as she trotteth off to the kitchen. "It is like to be _English_ that shall become the common tongue of the earth: it can't be no elsewise!" _Mynheer_ seemed wonderful taken with this fantasy of Cousin _Bess_. "How strange a thought that!" saith Aunt _Joyce_. "_Bess_ is in good company," answereth _Father_. "'Tis right the reasoning of Saint _Cyril_, when he maketh argument that the Temple of God, wherein the Man of Sin shall sit (as _Paul_ saith), cannot signify the _Christian_ Church. But wherefore, good Sir? say you. Oh, saith he, because `God forbid it should be this temple wherein we now are!'" "Well, it is a marvel to me," quoth Aunt _Joyce_, "that some folks seem to have no brains!" "Is it so great a marvel?" saith _Father_.