"Marry," replied the other, "'tis he who lags behind the cavalcade who must take the dust. For my part I like not to be outfaced by any idle boaster who may lisp--'Ah, 'tis an art to keep the bowl aglow! Ah, shouldst see me fill my mouth with smoke, and blow it out in rings! Odd's bodkin, the Duke himself said bravo!'" The stranger's mimicry of the mincing gallants of the day was to the life, and as they turned their steps toward the tavern, Master Francis laughed with satisfaction at finding himself in such good company. When presently his companion quoted Horace, he ventured to inquire at what school he had read the classics. "At none," was the reply. "Let those who will perform the threshing. I am content to pick up kernels here and there like a sleek rat in a farmer's barn. Your tippling scholar of the taproom will set forth a rasher of lean Xenophon with every cup of sack, and as for churchmen--they be all unnatural sons who so bedeck their mother tongue in scraps and shreds of foreign phrase, the poor beldame walks abroad as motley mantled as a fiddler's wanton." "But surely--_Justitia eum cuique distribuit_--as Cicero hath it," Master Francis cried in protest against such heresy. "You will not deny that an apt quotation lends grace to our too barren English." "'Tis a thin sauce to a rich meat," replied the other; adding modestly, "I am, an't please you, sir, but one who, having little Latin and less Greek, must make a shift with what is left to him." "Your speech belies you, sir," retorted Master Francis courteously, "for it proclaims a man of nice discrimination. I could swear you are a doctor of the law." "Then would you be forsworn," replied the other, laughing, "for, by the grace of God, I am near kinsman to the dancing poodle of a country fair. Come any afternoon at three o'clock to the Curtain Play-house at Shoreditch, and there for sixpence you may see my antics." "Ah, then you are a player!" Master Francis cried, well pleased. "For the lack of a more honest calling," his companion answered with a gesture as who should say, "Tell me where can be found an honester?" "Then we are in like case," laughed Master Francis. "_Fere totus mundus exercet histrionem_, says Phædrus; or as one might put it bluntly, 'All the world's a stage.'" "Methinks our English hath the better jingle," commented the player. "Would that some wordsmith might e'en recoin these ancient mintages to fill the meager purses of our mouths!" They had come now to the broad low archway leading to the courtyard of the Bull, and passing in beneath its shadow, Master Francis recalled the plays he had witnessed there in boyhood.