“Son,” said Claes, “he that would pour a hogshead into a keg would throw his beer into the gutter.”
“You will then be wise to pour your keg into my hogshead, for I am bigger than your tankard,” replied Ulenspiegel.
And Claes, delighted, gave him his tankard to drain. In this wise Ulenspiegel learned how to talk for his drink.
XV
Soetkin carried beneath her girdle the signs of renewed maternity; Katheline, too, was with child, but for fear dared not stir out of her house.
When Soetkin went to see her:
“Ah!” said she, lamenting, “what shall I do with the poor fruit of my womb? Must I strangle it? I would rather die. But if the constables take me, for having a child without being married, they will make me pay twenty florins, like a girl of loose life, and I shall be whipped on the marketplace.”
Soetkin then said some soothing word to console her, and having left her, went home pondering. Then one day she said to Claes:
“If instead of one child I had two, would you beat me, husband?”