“Boy,” said Alworthy, “I thought thee no such fool! Why crack thy brains with study when I can show thee a surer path to ease and preferment? But I see thou art too proud to do an old man a service. Thou writst thyself gentleman, forsooth, and high blood will not stoop.”
“Not so, sir,” returned Ambrose, “I would work in any way so I could study the humanities, and hear the Dean preach. Cannot you commend me to his school?”
“Ha!” exclaimed the canon, “this is your sort, is it? I’ll have nought to do with it! Preaching, preaching! Every idle child’s head is agog on preaching nowadays! A plague on it! Why can’t Master Dean leave it to the black friars, whose vocation ’tis, and not cumber us with his sermons for ever, and set every lazy lad thinking he must needs run after them? No, no, my good boy, take my advice. Thou shalt have two good bellyfuls a day, all my cast gowns, and a pair of shoes by the year, with a groat a month if thou wilt keep mine house, bring in my meals, and the like, and by and by, so thou art a good lad, and runst not after these new-fangled preachments which lead but to heresy, and set folk racking their brains about sin and such trash, we’ll get thee shorn and into minor orders, and who knows what good preferment thou mayst not win in due time!”
“Sir, I am beholden to you, but my mind is set on study.”
“What kin art thou to a fool?” cried the minor canon, so startling Ambrose that he had almost answered, and turning to another ecclesiastic whose siesta seemed to have ended about the same time, “Look at this varlet, Brother Cloudesley! Would you believe it? He comes to me with a letter from mine old friend, in consideration of which I offer him that saucy lubber Bolt’s place, a gown of mine own a year, meat and preferment, and, lo you, he tells me all he wants is to study Greek, forsooth, and hear the Dean’s sermons!”
The other canon shook his head in dismay at such arrant folly. “Young stripling, be warned,” he said. “Know what is good for thee. Greek is the tongue of heresy.”
“How may that be, reverend sir,” said Ambrose, “when the holy Apostles and the Fathers spake and wrote in the Greek?”
“Waste not thy time on him, brother,” said Mr. Alworthy. “He will find out his error when his pride and his Greek forsooth have brought him to fire and faggot.”
“Ay! ay!” added Cloudesley. “The Dean with his Dutch friend and his sermons, and his new grammar and accidence, is sowing heretics as thick as groundsel.”
Wherewith the two canons of the old school waddled away, arm in arm, and Bolt put out his head, leered at Ambrose, and bade him shog off, and not come sneaking after other folk’s shoes.