'See you that wall, friend?' he laughed. 'Is it not a noble dam to stay the flood back into our house? Now the Lord Cromwell....'
The Lanzknecht rolled his eyes round, because he understood no English. The old man went on talking, but no one there, not even Margot Poins, heeded him. She looked at her uncle reasonably, and said:
'Why, an thou wilt set down thy stick I will even consider thee, uncle.' He threw the stick into the corner and immediately she went to fetch a mop from the cooking closet, where there lived a mumbling old housekeeper. The printer followed her with gloomy eyes.
'Is not thy mistress a naughty woman?' he asked, as a judge talks to a prisoner condemned.
She answered, 'Nay,' as if she had hardly attended to him.
'Is she not a Papist?'
She answered, 'Aye,' in the same tone and mopped the floor beneath a man's chair.
Her grandfather, standing high on the oak chest, so that his bonnet brushed the beams of the dark ceiling, quavered at her:
'Would she not bring down this Crummock, whose wall hath formed a dam so that my land-space is now a stream and my house-floor a frog pond?'
She answered, 'Aye, grandfer,' and went on with her mopping.