Old Badge pulled at his nose and grinned maliciously at the fire beside him. 'That is thy deliverer: that is thy flail of the monks,' he croaked at his son. The printer gazed moodily at the fire. 'Nay, it is but one of his servants,' he answered mechanically. 'And such servants go up and down this realm of England and ride us with iron bridles.' The old man laughed dryly and bitterly. 'His servant? See how we are held--we dare not shut our doors upon him since he is Cromwell's servant, yet if he come in he shall ruin us, take our money that we dare not refuse, deflower our virgins.... What then is left to us between this setter up of walls and his servants?' The printer, fingering the T-square in his belt, said, slowly, 'I think this man loves too well that books should be printed in the Latin tongue to ruin any printer of them upon a private quarrel. Else I would get me across the seas.' 'He loves any wench much better,' the old man answered maliciously. 'Hearken!' Through the wall there came a scuffling sound, thumps, and the noise of things falling. The wall there touched on the one that Cromwell had set up, so that there was bare room for a man to creep between. 'Body of God,' the printer said, 'is he eavesdropping now?' 'Nay, this is courtship,' the old man answered. His head leaned forward with a birdlike intentness; he listened with one hand held out as if to still any sound in the room. They heard footsteps from the floor above, a laugh and voices. 'Now Margot talks to him from her window.' The printer had a motion of convulsed rage: 'I will break that knave's spine across my knee.' 'Nay, let be,' the old man said. 'I command thee, who am thy father, to let the matter be.' 'Would you have him ...' the printer began with a snarl. 'I would not have my house burnt down because this Cromwell's spy's body should be found upon our hands.... To-morrow the wench shall be sent to her aunt Wardle in Bedfordshire--aye, and she shall be soundly beaten to teach her to love virtue.' The young man opened the house door and came in, shivering in his scarlet because he had run out without his cloak. 'A pretty medley you have made,' he said to his uncle, 'but I have calmed him. Wherefore should not this magister marry Margot?' He made again for the fire. 'Are we to smell always of ink?' He looked disdainfully at his uncle's proofs, and began to speak with a boy's seriousness and ingenuous confidence. They would tell his uncle at Court that if good print be the body of a book, good learning is even the soul of it. At Court he would learn that it is thought this magister shall rise high. There good learning is much prized. Their Lord the King had been seen to talk and laugh with this magister. 'For our gracious lord loveth good letters. He is in such matters skilled beyond all others in the realm.'