“He who knows the reason for everything,” said Smetse, “is an evil prier. Such a one am not I.”
“But,” said she, “they speak never a word.”
“They do not like to talk,” said Smetse, “that is clear. Or it may be that their master chose them dumb, so that they should not waste time chattering with housewives.”
“Yes, that may be,” she said, while the thirty-first porter was going past, “but ’tis very strange, I cannot hear their footfalls, my man?”
“They have for certain,” said Smetse, “soles to suit their work.”
“But,” she said, “their faces are so pale, sad, and motionless, that they seem like faces of the dead.”
“Night-birds have never a good complexion,” said Smetse.
“But,” said his wife, “I have never seen these men among the guilds of Ghent.”
“Thou dost not know them all,” said Smetse.
“That may be, my man.”