“Before aught ailed him, he was set upon my carving a corbel.”
“Ay, but not a forward one, such as this, and not without his being here to overlook thee. This is another matter.”
“It may be so, reverend sir. In good sooth, I found it hard to give up my own work and take his, but since it pleasured him, and since he can trust it in my hands, I must work, if I work at all, without such let or hindrance as you would put on me. You say truly that it is a great task. I cannot carry it out fettered and cramped. If the Lord Bishop and his chapter hold that I have forfeited the trust they committed to me, I would humbly pray to be allowed to resign it. If it is left in my hands, then I must be as the other men, free to work undisturbed.”
Hugh spoke with great modesty, yet so firmly as to amaze the little precentor, who had thought he might meet with a boy’s petulance, which he was determined to put down. He would have liked to take Hugh at his word and dismiss him, but this he could not venture to do, since the bishop, though he had had his fears, thought highly of the lad’s genius, and would have strongly resented any such high-handed act. He found himself in a position for which he was quite unprepared, obliged to withdraw his commands, but he was not the man to do this frankly or fully.
“Thou art a malapert springald to bandy words with me,” he said angrily. “Thou, a mere prentice, to put thyself on a level with other men! This comes of being cockered and made much of, out of thy fit place. But I shall speak with the bishop, and I wot we shall see whether thine insolence is to go unchastised.”
He spoke loud enough for some of the other men to hear, and marched off, leaving Hugh very angry, though he had been able to control all outward signs of wrath. He went up his ladder again, hearing a chuckle of laughter among the others, and feeling sore and bitter with all the world.
“As if it were not enough to have given up what I had thought of so long,” he muttered, looking round at the corbel on the other side, which, somewhat to his surprise, no one had yet been set upon, “but I must be flouted at for failing when I have scarce begun, and set to ask counsel from—whom? Roger, maybe, Roger, who could not do his own task without stealing from my wits! Well, I have finely angered the precentor, and it will be no wonder if it is all stopped, and I am sent off, though I said naught that was unbecoming, or that I should not be forced to say again. I will tell the master, and he shall judge.”
The precentor was indeed very angry, and the first person he met, and to whom he poured out his indignation, was Master William Pontington, the canon, who had been one of the last to admit the possibility of the prentice being allowed to undertake the carving of a corbel.
“This,” said the precentor solemnly, “this comes of the bishop’s weak—hem—over-easiness. If he permitted such a thing, it should have been under control and direction, instead whereof we have a young jackanapes perched up there, and left to amuse himself as he likes, and telling me—telling me to my very face—that he is as good as any other!”
It was well-known among the chapter that the precentor never omitted a chance of saying a word against the bishop, and the canon smiled.