“How is it with the old man at Windsor?” asked one.
“And how with the good Queen Philippa?”
“And how with Dame Alice Perrers?” cried a third.
“The devil take your tongue, Wat!” shouted a tall young man, seizing the last speaker by the collar and giving him an admonitory shake. “The prince would take your head off for those words.”
“By God's coif! Wat would miss it but little,” said another. “It is as empty as a beggar's wallet.”
“As empty as an English squire, coz,” cried the first speaker. “What a devil has become of the maitre-des-tables and his sewers? They have not put forth the trestles yet.”
“Mon Dieu! if a man could eat himself into knighthood, Humphrey, you had been a banneret at the least,” observed another, amid a burst of laughter.
“And if you could drink yourself in, old leather-head, you had been first baron of the realm,” cried the aggrieved Humphrey. “But how of England, my lads of Loring?”
“I take it,” said Ford, “that it is much as it was when you were there last, save that perchance there is a little less noise there.”
“And why less noise, young Solomon?”