Mistress Walgrave, his wife, as I said, was ever my good friend. She was no common woman, and how those two made a match of it always puzzled me. Before she came to England (so she had told me often), she lived at Rochelle, in France, where her first husband was a merchant in lace. Then, when he died of the plague ten years ago, she came with her two young children (the elder being but five years), to her mother's home in Kent, where Robert Walgrave, being on a visit to Canterbury, met her, and offered her marriage. And in truth she had been the brightness of his house ever since, and her two French children, Jeannette and Prosper, now tall girl and boy, lived with her, as did some three other urchins who called Master Walgrave father. Sweet Jeannette was my favourite; for she was lame, and had her mother's cheery smile, and thought ill of no one, least of all of me whom she called her big crutch, and tormented by talking French. Many a summer afternoon, when work was slack, I carried her to the water-side, where she might sit and watch the river flowing past. And to reward me she made me read her about King Arthur and his knights, and stories from Mr Chaucer's book; much of which I understood not, though (being a printer's 'prentice), I knew the words. One still evening as we sat thus, not a week after my adventure in Finsbury Fields, she broke in on my reading with-- "_Voila_, see there, Master Humphrey; _mais, comme elle est jolie_!" "I don't know what you say, when you talk like that, mistress," said I; for I liked not the French jargon, although by dint of long suffering it I had a better guess at the meaning of it often than I cared to own. "Look, I say," said she, "would not she be a queen of beauty for the knights of old to fight for?" I looked where she pointed; and there, gliding within a few yards of us, passed a boat, and in it, drinking in the beauty of the evening, sat a maiden, at sight of whom I felt the blood desert my cheeks, and the hand that held the book tremble. Her old companion was beside her dozing, and the waterman lugged lazily at his oars, humming an air to himself. Jeannette, happily, was looking not at me but at her, and so my troubled looks escaped her. "I never saw a face more fair," said she. "'Tis like a picture out of Mr Chaucer's book. And now that she is past, the day seems darker. Go on reading, please, kind Master Humphrey." I tried to go on, but I blundered and lost my place, while my eyes tried to follow the boat. Would she but have looked round! Could she but have known who it was that watched her! Could I myself have dared even to shout or call! Alas! the boat glided by, and her form, stately, erect, fearless, lost itself in the distance. What dreamed she--a queen--of an uncouth London 'prentice? "Master Dexter," said Jeannette's soft voice presently, "for five whole minutes you have been trying to read one little sentence, and it still lacks an ending. What ails you?"