Sir Thomas.
“Quaint and solid as the best yew hedge. I marvel at thee. A knight might have spoken it, under favour. They stopped her at Warwick—to see what? two old towers that don’t match, [105a] and a portcullis that (people say) opens only upon fast-days. Charlecote Hall, I could have told her sweet Highness, was built by those Lucys who came over with Julius Cæsar and William the Conqueror, with cross and scallop-shell on breast and beaver.”
“But, honest Willy!?—”
Such were the very words; I wrote them down with two signs in the margent,—one a mark of admiration, as thus (!), the other of interrogation (so we call it) as thus (?).
“But, honest Willy, I would fain hear more,” quoth he, “about the learned Doctor Glaston. He seemeth to be a man after God’s own heart.”
William Shakspeare.
“Ay is he! Never doth he sit down to dinner but he readeth first a chapter of the Revelation; and if he tasteth a pound of butter at Carfax, he saith a grace long enough to bring an appetite for a baked bull’s [106a] —zle. If this be not after God’s own heart, I know not what is.”
Sir Thomas.
“I would fain confer with him, but that Oxford lieth afar off,—a matter of thirty miles, I hear. I might, indeed, write unto him; but our Warwickshire pens are mighty broad-nibbed, and there is a something in this plaguy ink of ours sadly ropy—”
“I fear there is,” quoth Willy.