Anstace fell a-laughing. “Then thou wilt have to go without!” saith she.
“Well,” said I, “that could I do, may-be, nor break my heart o’er it neither. But to take any that should have me,—Anstace, I would as soon sell me for a slave.”
“Come, Nell!—where didst pick up such notions?” quoth she.
“Verily, I might answer thee, of the Queen’s Majesty,” said I: “and if I be not in good company enough, search thou for better. Only, for pity’s sake, Sister Anstace, do let me a-be.”
“Eh, I’ll let thee be,” saith she, and wagged her head and laughed. “But in good sooth, Nell, thou art a right queer body. And if it should please the Queen’s Highness to wed with Mounseer (Note 1), as ’tis thought of many it shall, then thou wilt be out of her company, and I shall be in. What shalt thou do then for company?”
“Marry, I can content me with Aunt Joyce and Cousin Bess,” quoth I, “and none so bad neither.”
So at after that we gat to other discourse, and after a while, when Milly came in with the childre, we all went down into the great chamber, where Father, and Hal, and Mynheer, were yet at their weighty debates. Cousin Bess was sat in the window, a-sewing on some flannel: and Aunt Joyce, in the same window, but the other corner, was busied with tapestry-work, being a cushion that she is fashioning for a Christmas gift for some dame that is her friend at Minster Lovel. ’Tis well-nigh done; and when it shall be finished, it shall go hence by old Postlethwaite the carrier; for six weeks is not too much betwixt here and Minster Lovel.
As we came in, I heard Father to say—
“Truly, there is no end of the diverse fantasy of men’s minds.” And then he brought forth some Latin, which I conceived not: but whispering unto Aunt Joyce (which is something learned in that tongue) to say what it were, she made answer, “So many men, so many minds.” (Quot homines, tot sententiae.)
“Ha!” saith Mynheer. “Was it not that which the Emperor Charles did discover with his clocks and watches? He was very curious in clocks and watches—the Emperor Charles the Fifth—you know?—and in his chamber at the Monastery of San Yuste he had so many. And watching them each day, he found they went not all at one. The big clock was five minutes to twelve when the little watch was two minutes past. So he tried to make them at one: but they would not. No, no! the big clock and the little watch, they go their own way. Then said the Emperor, ‘Now I see something I saw not aforetime. I thought I could make these clocks go together, but no! Yet they are only the work of men like me. Ah, the foolish man to think that I could compel men to think all alike, who are the work of the great God.’ You see?”