“Because—there, I have chipped it!” scratching his head in dismay.
“And small wonder! Give me thy tool, which thou holdest as the goodwife holds her knife—so!”
“If I thought it were any use—” began the disconsolate Wat.
“Try and see.”
“And thou thinkest I might catch the trick of it?”
“Try. There, now go on. Thou knowest as well as any how to hold the tools.”
So far as impatience and calling of names went Hugh was a harder taskmaster than Franklyn, but he put more energy into his teaching, and dragged the reluctant Wat along by sheer force of will, the result being that, though he got no praise for himself, some fell to his pupil, which really pleased him as much as if it had been the other way.
Wat was the great purveyor of news; no one knew how he picked up his information, but nothing happened in the city but it somehow reached his ears before it was half an hour old. He knew of all the quarrels between the bishop and chapter and the mayor and his twenty-four councillors or aldermen, and how two of the canons fell upon two of the bailiffs and pommelled them vigorously, before even the mayor’s wife had been informed of the scandal. He it was who reported the falling out between Sir Baldwin de Fulford and his wife, because she wanted an extravagantly fine chaplet of gold, the cost of which displeased him. It seemed that there were great expenses she led him into, for they had glass over from France for their windows, and forks for dinner, and many such luxuries, and each one Wat knew quite well—though how, no one ever knew. And at last, one day in January, when there had been a fall of snow which whitened all the roofs, and gave great joy to the prentice lads, Wat rushed in, powdered over with snow, so full of news that he could scarce keep from shouting it out as he ran, and so intent upon that and nothing else that he rushed up against Mistress Prothasy, and sent the dish of roasted apples she was carrying out of her hand. She gave him a sound box in his ear, and told him he should have no apples for supper. But even this threat could not compose Wat, well as he loved roasted apples.
“Truly, good wife,” he said, breathlessly, as he picked them up, “thou must forgive me this time for my news.”
“What news?” said Prothasy crossly. “Thou hast ever some foolish tale in thy idle head.”