“Then why do you open your mouth to tell me so?”
“I am angry,” said she.
Ulenspiegel very lightly gave her a blow with his fist in the back, and said:
“Kiss a mean thing, she’ll punch you; punch a mean thing and she’ll anoint you. Anoint me then, darling, since I have punched you.”
Nele turned about. He opened his arms, she cast herself in them still weeping, and said:
“You won’t go there again, Thyl, will you?”
But he made her no answer, for he was too busy clasping her poor trembling fingers and wiping away with his lips the hot tears falling from Nele’s eyes like the big drops of a thunder shower.
XXVIII
In these days, the noble town of Ghent refused to pay her quota of the subsidy her son Charles the Emperor had asked of her. She could not, being void of money through the very doings of Charles. This was a great crime; he determined to go in his own person to chastise her.