“Where is the hurry? cannot you be content to pay when you go? lose the guest, find the money, is the rule of 'The Three Fish.'”
“But, dame, outside 'The Three Fish' it is thus written—'Ici-on ne loge—”
“Bah! Let that flea stick on the wall! Look hither,” and she pointed to the smoky ceiling, which was covered with hieroglyphics. These were accounts, vulgo scores; intelligible to this dame and her daughter, who wrote them at need by simply mounting a low stool, and scratching with a knife so as to show lines of ceiling through the deposit of smoke. The dame explained that the writing on the wall was put there to frighten moneyless folk from the inn altogether, or to be acted on at odd times when a non-paying face should come in and insist on being served. “We can't refuse them plump, you know. The law forbids us.”
“And how know you mine is not such a face?”
“Out fie! it is the best face that has entered 'The Three Fish' this autumn.”
“And mine, dame?” said Denys; “dost see no knavery here?”
She eyed him calmly. “Not such a good one as the lad's; nor ever will be. But it is the face of a true man. For all that,” added she drily, “an I were ten years younger, I'd as lieve not meet that face on a dark night too far from home.”
Gerard stared. Denys laughed. “Why, dame, I would but sip the night dew off the flower; and you needn't take ten years off, nor ten days, to be worth risking a scratched face for.”
“There, our mistress,” said Marion, who had just come in, “said I not t'other day you could make a fool of them still, an if you were properly minded?”
“I dare say ye did; it sounds like some daft wench's speech.”