William’s father, besides being a skilful workman, had been no unthrifty husbandman, so that when he departed this life (God rest his soul) he left unto his son, not only the good dry house at the Bridgend with its adjoining workshop, but much choice stone and timber ready prepared for working upon, a set of carving tools of such sort as were not known in these parts (some having been fetched from as far as Flanders), and a great chest in the bed-chamber nigh half full of golden coin. But although William was a better workman than his father, he was a less thrifty husbandman, for he would not give himself to the careful managing and sparing and putting by, which had made his father a burgher of substance. ‘Money!’ Will was wont to say to his boon fellows at the alehouse,--‘Money! Why, ’tis for spending! I’d as lief be an earthworm and dwell in a midden as sweat and stint and spare to hoard up bits of metal in an old chest. Wife, a good cup of ale for these gentlemen all, and draw of your best. What saith Holy Writ: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth, where the moth and the rust corrupt and thieves break through and steal”?’ Then he would run on in his old jesting vein: ‘I will give my best cloak to the man among you who can empty yon stoup without drawing breath, and a French crown to him who hath the reddest nose. I love a red nose above all things, especially when ’tis past strawberry time. What, Nicholas, thou merry devil, strike a tune!’ Whereupon merrily in the alehouse went tabor, tongues, and toes until bedtime, when Will, who called the tune, usually paid the piper in more ways than one. God knows he was a happy, devil-may-care fellow enough, like the pretty painted butterflies you can see in the fields in summertime, ready to spend right royally and to quip and to laugh with the best and worst of folk. When he gave gifts at Saint Valentine’s there were none so rare and fair as his in the town; when he gave alms he scattered his silver right and left like the Lord King when he goes up to Westminster to be crowned, and as though good coin was of no more account than hazel-nuts in September. Twice he journeyed to London to see some marvellous sculpture in a new church there of which he had heard Abbot Absalom speak, and Our Lady alone knows of how much the cozengers and lying knaves of Eastcheap cheated him. Certainly, however, he went each time with a good fat purse at his girdle and returned each time with it emaciated and chapfallen as one of Pharaoh’s lean kine. But he also brought back with him two or three great bales of rich cloths and embroideries, which he had purchased there, partly for his own back and partly for gifts to certain wenches with whom he kept company.