“He means deanery. Give me one of those bones so full of marrow, and let my lord bishop have all the meat over it, and welcome. If a dean is not on his stilts, he is not on his stumps; he stands on his own ground; he is a noli-metangeretarian.”
“What art thou saying of those sectaries, good Master Silas?” quoth Sir Thomas, not hearing him distinctly.
“I was talking of the dean,” replied Master Silas. “He was the very dean who wrote and sang that song called the Two Jacks.”
“Hast it?” asked he.
Master Silas shook his head, and, trying in vain to recollect it, said at last,—
“After dinner it sometimes pops out of a filbert-shell in a crack; and I have known it float on the first glass of Herefordshire cider; it also hath some affinity with very stiff and old bottled beer; but in a morning it seemeth unto me like a remnant of over-night.”
“Our memory waneth, Master Silas!” quoth Sir Thomas, looking seriously. “If thou couldst repeat it, without the grimace of singing, it were not ill.”
Master Silas struck the table with his fist, and repeated the first stave angrily; but in the second he forgot the admonition of Sir Thomas, and did sing outright,—
“Jack Calvin and Jack Cade,
Two gentles of one trade,
Two tinkers,
Very gladly would pull down
Mother Church and Father Crown,
And would starve or would drown
Right thinkers.
“Honest man! honest man!
Fill the can, fill the can,
They are coming! they are coming! they are coming!
If any drop be left,
It might tempt ’em to a theft—
Zooks! it was only the ale that was humming.”