“What then?”
“What?”
“Yes, tell me what!”
“Why,” said he, “since you have upset my inkstand, and crumpled my writing, I will well crumple your parchment, and that I may not be prevented from writing by want of ink, I will dip into your inkstand.”
“By my soul,” quoth she, “you are not the man to do it. Do you think I am afraid of you?”
“It does not matter what sort of man I am,” said the clerk, “but if you worry me any more, I am man enough to make you pay for it. Look here! I will draw a line on the floor, and by God, if you overstep it, be it ever so little, I wish I may die if I do not make you pay dearly for it.”
“By my word,” said she, “I am not afraid of you, and I will pass the line and see what you will do,” and so saying the merry hussy made a little jump which took her well over the line.
The clerk grappled with her, and threw her down on a bench, and punished her well, for if she had rumpled him outside and openly, he rumpled her inside and secretly.
Now you must know that there was present at the time a young child, about two years old, the son of the lawyer. It need not be said either, that after this first passage of arms between the clerk and his mistress, there were many more secret encounters between them, with less talk and more action than on the first occasion.
You must know too that, a few days after this adventure, the little child was in the office where the clerk was writing, when there came in the lawyer, the master of the house, who walked across the room to his clerk, to see what he wrote, or for some other matter, and as he approached the line which the clerk had drawn for his wife, and which still remained on the floor, his little son cried,