"Nay, Dorothy," said I, "mine was but a small matter, a few shillings by the year, which, in the common course, I could not have had much longer. 'Twas easy enough to give up so small a thing, but I judge not them who for wife and children's sake have strained their conscience, it may be, beyond that which is right." As I spake, I noticed that my good brother looked somewhat grave and heavy, and so went on-- "But _cras seria_, as some one hath it, which may be translated, Mistress Dorothy, lest, haply, you have forgotten your Latin, 'business to-morrow.' And now, Dorothy, tell me about this little Philip." Dorothy had much to say about the babe, which I will not here set down. And when she had ended her talk, which she did, not because she had said enough concerning his beauty and goodness, but because she was constrained to depart with him and lay him in his cradle, from which he had been kept overlong, we discoursed about other things, as sport and country matters of divers kinds, buying and selling of horses and cattle and the like, with Master Willis, who was a farmer, and a person of no small consideration, seeing that he paid more tithes than any other in the parish, and was churchwarden to boot. He was in a complaining mood, for which, doubtless, he had at the time sufficiently good reason, but which seems to be common to all who follow his occupation. I suppose that they who spend their time in this business of tilling the earth have ever from day to day disappointments, unseasonable weather, promise of crops ill performed, and the like, which, though they be severally small, yet from their number and frequent occurrence worry the soul; and it is ever the way with men that little evils obscure and drive out of mind great goods.