“The guild would help in case of need.”
“So thou sayest, but never wouldst thou apply.”
He made no answer, only seemed to be reflecting as he left the room. She walked quickly up and down, once or twice dropping her long dress and stumbling in it.
“Was ever anyone so good as he, or so provoking!” she exclaimed, half crying. “A fine dowry will come to Joan, when her father spends his all upon strangers! And yet he makes me cry shame upon myself for close-fistedness, and wonder at the sweetness with which he bears my sourness. If he will, he shall have the boy as prentice, I’ll e’en put up with the monkey; but, do what I will, it is certain I shall season any kindness with sharp words, and Elyas will feel that all the while I am grudging. I would I had a better heart, or he a worse!”
Elyas, meanwhile, all unknowing of these stormy signs of relenting, went slowly up to the little bare room where the carver lay, while Hugh, looking out of the small unglazed window, was telling him as much as he could see to be going on in the street. Stephen, however, was paying little attention, and when Gervase came in his eyes brightened at once.
“Leave Agrippa here,” he said to Hugh, “and do thou run out and look at the Cathedral, and bring me back word what it is like.”
His interview with his host was long, the more so as he could speak but slowly, and at times had to stop altogether from exhaustion. Then it was necessary that Elyas should see the carving, which took him altogether by surprise.
“Truly,” he said, “this will make our good bishop’s mouth water! He is ever seeking for beautiful work for St. Peter’s, and thou mightest have made thy fortune with misereres and stalls. Perchance—” he said, looking hesitatingly at the carver. Stephen shook his head.
“Never again,” he said. “But Hugh, young as he is, has it in him. If—if he could be thy apprentice?”
Elyas almost started at having his thought so quickly presented to him from the other side, but he did not answer at once, and Stephen went on, his words broken by painful breathing—