"And knew you Master Christopher?" asked Master Francis with increasing interest.
"Marry, I knew him well," replied the player. "Marry, a poet. Marry, a rimester to couple you a couplet while your Flemish fighter quaffs a mug of sack, and pay the reckoning with a sonnet to his landlord's honesty. 'The first line,' he would say, 'shall tell the weight of it.' And here he did set down a naught. 'So likewise with the second, which doth sing its breadth; the third proclaims its depth'—another naught, and thus until the measure of the verse was writ. 'Now add them for thyself,' he bids the rum-fed Malmsey monger, 'and by the thirst of Tantalus, the sum shall blazon both thine honor and my debt.'"
"Methinks 'twas but a scurvy trick," protested Master Francis, laughing tolerantly. "What said the host to it?"
"In faith," replied the player, "he found the meter falling short and clamored for money. 'Money!' quoth Kit. 'Think well on't! for if, as men of reason all agree, naught is better than money, you are overpaid in getting naught!'"
"His was a pretty wit indeed," assented Master Francis. "Enter!" he urged with a gesture of hospitality.
"Nay!" cried the other. "As I am a just man it is perilous to enter into a writer's castle where one without offense is often lashed with lyrics or—what is more fearful—pilloried in prose. And furthermore, this Hebe of all Hodges, I have heard, this Helen of Houndsditch, hath a stout broomstick hid behind her door for players," he added, making a pretense of looking about him warily as he followed his host up the stairs, Master Francis going first to light a candle with a flint and steel.
"Come in," he said as the flame flickered up, "and welcome to my chambers, though this poor farthing dip is little better than a glowworm that doth serve to make the darkness visible."
"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," returned the other, throwing himself into a seat.
"You are yourself a poet!" Master Francis cried, "for you temper the cold iron of rough speech with oil of metaphor."
"Nay," said the player, "I am no rimester, but like a scissors-grinder I sometimes put a keener edge on better men's inventions. Faith," he continued, looking about him with approval, "I knew not that our Kit was housed so well. This is a very bower in which to woo the Muse. Friend, had I your table and your chair, your inkwell and your wit, it would not take me long to be the owner of one hundred pounds."