"What are my ears for, mistress?"
"True. Well throw us the light of thy wisdom on this dark matter."
"There is no darkness that I see," said Reicht. "And the clue, why an' ye call't a two-plye twine, and the ends on't in this room e'en now, ye'll not be far out. Oh, mistress, I wonder at you sitting there pretending."
"Marry, come up!" and the mistress's cheek was now nearly as red as the servant's. "So 'twas I drove the foolish girl away."
"You did your share, mistress. What sort of greeting gave you her last time she came? Think you she could miss to notice it, and she all friendless? And you said, 'I have altered my mind about painting of you,' says you, a turning up your nose at her."
"I did not turn up my nose. It is not shaped like yours for looking heavenward."
"Oh, all our nosen can follow our heartys bent, for that matter. Poor soul. She did come into the kitchen to me. 'I am not to be painted now,' said she, and the tears in her eyes. She said no more. But I knew well what she did mean. I had seen ye."
"Well," said Margaret Van Eyck, "I do confess so much, and I make you the judge, madam. Know that these young girls can do nothing of their own heads, but are most apt at mimicking aught their sweethearts do. Now your Gerard is reasonably handy at many things, and among the rest at the illuminator's craft. And Margaret she is his pupil, and a patient one: what marvel? having a woman's eye for colour, and eke a lover to ape. 'Tis a trick I despise at heart: for by it the great art of colour, which should be royal, aspiring, and free, becomes a poor slave to the petty crafts of writing and printing, and is fettered, imprisoned, and made little, body and soul, to match the littleness of books, and go to church in a rich fool's pocket. Natheless affection rules us all, and, when the poor wench would bring me her thorn leaves, and lilies, and ivy, and dewberries, and ladybirds, and butterfly grubs, and all the scum of nature—stuck fast in gold-leaf like wasps in a honey-pot, and, withal her diurnal book, showing she had pored an hundred, or an hundred and fifty, or two hundred, hours over each singular page, certes I was wroth that an immortal soul and many hours of labour, and much manual skill, should be flung away on Nature's trash, leaves, insects, grubs, and on barren letters: but, having bowels, I did perforce restrain, and, as it were, dam my better feelings, and looked kindly at the work to see how it might be bettered: and said I, 'Sith Heaven for our sins hath doomed us to spend time, and soul, and colour, on great letters and little beetles, omitting such small fry as saints and heroes, their acts and passions, why not present the scum naturally?' I told her 'the grapes I saw, walking abroad, did hang i' the air, not stick in a wall: and even these insects,' quo' I, 'and Nature her slime in general, pass not their noxious lives wedged miserably in metal prisons like flies in honey-pots and glue-pots, but do crawl or hover at large, infesting air.' 'Ah! my dear friend,' says she, 'I see now whither you drive: but this ground is gold; whereon we may not shade.' 'Who says so?' quoth I. 'All teachers of this craft,' says she: and (to make an end o' me at once, I trow) 'Gerard himself!' 'That for Gerard himself,' quoth I, 'and all the gang; gi'e me a brush!'
"Then chose I, to shade her fruit and reptiles, a colour false in nature, but true relatively to that monstrous ground of glaring gold; and in five minutes out came a bunch of raspberries, stalk and all, and a'most flew in your mouth: likewise a butterfly grub she had so truly presented as might turn the stoutest stomach. My lady she flings her arms round my neck, and says she, 'Oh!'"
"Did she now?"