'You owe me nine crowns,' old Badge threatened him. He picked irritably at the fur on his gown and gazed at the carved leg of the table. 'If you will not induce Privy Seal to pull down his wall I will set the tipstaves on you.' Master Udal laughed. 'I will give thy daughter ten crowns' worth of lessons in the learned tongues.' 'You will receive another broken crown, magister,' the younger John said moodily. 'Have you not scars enow by your wenching?' Udal pushed back the furs at his collar. 'Master Printer John Badge the Younger,' he flickered, 'if you break my crown I will break your chapel. You shall never have license to print another libel. Give me your niece in wedlock?' The old man said querulously, 'Here's a wantipole without ten crowns would marry a wench with three beds and seven hundred florins!' Udal laughed. 'Call her to bring me meat and drink,' he said. 'Large words ill fill an empty stomach.' The younger John went negligently to the great Flemish press. He opened the face and revealed on its dark shelves a patty of cold fish and a black jack. With heavy movements and a solemn face he moved these things, with a knife and napkins, on to the broad black table. The old man pulled his nose again and grinned. 'Margot's in her chamber,' he chuckled. 'As you came up the wicket way I sent my John to turn the key upon her. It's there at his girdle.' It clinked indeed among rules, T-squares and callipers at each footstep of the heavy printer between press and table. Magister Udal stretched his thin hands towards it. 'I will give you the printing of the Lady Mary's commentary of Plautus for that key,' he said. The printer murmured 'Eat,' and set a great pewter salt-cellar, carved like a Flemish pikeman, a foot high, heavily upon the cloth. Udal had the appetite of a wolf. He pulled off his cap the better to let his jaws work. 'Here's a letter from the Doctor Wernken of Augsburg,' he said. 'You may see how the Lutherans fare in Germany.' The printer took the letter and read it, standing, frowning and heavy. Magister Udal ate; the old man fingered his furs and, leaning far back in his mended chair, gazed at nothing. 'Let me have the maid in wedlock,' Udal grunted between two bites. 'Better women have looked favourably upon me. I had a pupil in the North----' 'She was a Howard, and the Howards are all whores,' the printer said, over the letter. 'Your Doctor Wernken writes like an Anabaptist.' 'They are even as the rest of womenkind,' Udal laughed, 'but far quicker with their learning.' A boy rising twenty, in a grey cloak that showed only his bright red stockings and broad-toed red shoes, rattled the back door and slammed it to. He pulled off his cap and shook it. 'It snows,' he said buoyantly, and then knelt before his grandfather. The old man touched his grandson's cropped fair head. '_Benedicite_, grandson Hal Poins,' he muttered, and relapsed into his gaze at the fire.