Father Shoveller mused a good deal over his pike and its savoury stuffing. He was not by any means an ideal monk, but he was equally far from being a scandal. He was the shrewd man of business and manager of his fraternity, conducting the farming operations and making all the bargains, following his rule respectably according to the ordinary standard of his time, but not rising to any spirituality, and while duly observing the fast day, as to the quality of his food, eating with the appetite of a man who lived in the open fields. But when their hunger was appeased, with many a fragment given to Spring, the young Birkenholts, wearied of the endless talk that was exchanged over the tankard, began to grow restless, and after exchanging signs across Father Shoveller’s solid person, they simultaneously rose, and began to thank him and say they must pursue their journey. “How now, not so fast, my sons,” said the Father; “tarry a bit, I have more to say to thee. Prayers and provender, thou knowst—I’ll come anon. So, sir, didst say yonder beggarly Flemings haggle at thy price for thy Southdown fleeces. Weight of dirt forsooth! Do not we wash the sheep in the Poolhole stream, the purest water in the shire?” Manners withheld Ambrose from responding to Stephen’s hot impatience, while the merchant in the sleek puce-coloured coat discussed the Flemish wool market with the monk for a good half-hour longer. By this time the knight’s horses were brought into the yard, and the merchant’s men had made ready his palfrey, his pack-horse being already on the way; the host’s son came round with the reckoning, and there was a general move. Stephen expected to escape, and hardly could brook the good-natured authority with which Father Shoveller put Ambrose aside, when he would have discharged their share of the reckoning, and took it upon himself. “Said I not ye were my guests?” quoth he. “We missed our morning mass, it will do us no harm to hear Nones in the Minster.” “Sir, we thank you, but we should be on our way,” said Ambrose, incited by Stephen’s impatient gestures. “Tut, tut. Fair and softly, my son, or more haste may be worse speed. Methought ye had somewhat to show me.” Stephen’s youthful independence might chafe, but the habit of submission to authorities made him obediently follow the monk out at the back entrance of the inn, behind which lay the Minster yard, the grand western front rising in front of them, and the buildings of St. Swithun’s Abbey extending far to their right. The hour was nearly noon, and the space was deserted, except for an old woman sitting at the great western doorway with a basket of rosaries made of nuts and of snail shells, and a workman or two employed on the bishop’s new reredos.