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He was bound by his engagements to join the Badgers again, or he would have gone home on his recovery; and he had shared in the terrible taking of Rome, of which he declared that he could not speak with a significant look at Dennet and her children, who were devouring his words.
And Dennet, with her sharp woman's wit, scenting danger, had whisked herself and her children out of the hall at the first moment, and taken them down to the kitchen, where modelling with a batch of dough occupied both of them. Meantime the alderman flatly denied the presence of the jester, or the harbouring of the gipsy.
Sundry City magnates had come to supper with Master Headley, and whether it were the effect of Ambrose's counsel, or of the example of a handsome lad who had come with his father, one of the worshipful guild of Merchant Taylors, Giles did vouchsafe to bestir himself in waiting, and in consideration of the effort it must have cost him, old Mrs Headley and her son did not take notice of his blunders, but only Dennet fell into a violent fit of laughter, when he presented the stately alderman with a nutmeg under the impression that it was an overgrown peppercorn.
With the air that ever showed his gentle blood, Stephen put a knee to the ground, and kissed the fingers that held it to him, whereupon Dennet, a sudden burning blush overspreading her face under her little pointed hood, turned suddenly round and ran into the house.
The apprentices and journeymen came into the court, among them Giles Headley, who had been taken out by one of the men to be provided with a working dress, much to his disgust; the grandmother summoned little Dennet and carried her off to bed. Stephen and Ambrose bade good-night, but Master Headley and his two confidential men remained somewhat longer to wind up their accounts.
"They told me your Grace was in Council with my Lord Cardinal," said Sir Thomas More; "but seeing that there was likewise this merry company, I durst venture to thrust in, since my business is urgent." Dennet here forgot court manners enough to cry out, "O your Grace! your Grace, be pleased for pity's sake to let me have the pardon for them first, or they'll be hanged and dead.
Now it was the alderman for misusing him, overtasking the poor child, and deferring the marriage, now it was that little pert poppet, Dennet, who had flouted him, now it was the bad company he had been led into the poor babe who had been bred to godly ways.
"Grammercy, mistress, but we follow my grand-dame's recipe!" said Dennet, grasping her implement firmly. "Come, child, be not above taking a lesson from thine elders! Where's the goose? What?" as the girl looked amazed, "where hast thou lived not to know that a live goose should be bled into the mincemeat?"
But he said he would commend me to a friend whose life would better show me how the new gives life to the old than any man he wots of." "One of thy old doctors in barnacles, I trow," said Stephen. "Nay, verily. We saw him t'other night perilling his life to stop the poor crazy prentices, and save the foreigners. Dennet and our uncle saw him pleading for them with the King." "What!
He probably would have made the same mechanical greeting, if the Emperor or the Pope had been at that moment presented to him; but Dennet, who had been attending to her father, made up all that was wanting in cordiality.
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