“Here's clever talk!” said Alice. “And my eyes are good enough for me. I can weave with the best, and I don't need words to help me. If I can't build a house I can keep one clean. And as for this Latin the scholars talk one with another, I manage quite well, sir, with my native tongue.”

“May I say, madam, that I am convinced you manage … you manage admirably.”

“But my husband is a poet,” said Jane in mild reproof.

“Poetry won't bake bread. Nor make a man wealthy, so I've heard.”

“Who speaks of wealth, madam?”

“I do, sir. For in this world it is a useful thing to have. And no matter what you tell me, riches come through work and thrifty living … not through writing poetry.”

“True riches belong to the spirit, madam, which uses its own resources to improve itself. We can only call a man rich if he understands die uses of wealth. Any man who piles up endless wealth, merely to count it, is like the bee who labors in the hive. He toils; others eat up the honey.”

“I speak of money not of honey, Master More. It seems you are a man who cannot keep to the point. You may smile. Methinks I should be the one to smile.”

A faint color showed in the cheeks of Alice Middleton. She liked the man; that was why she was giving him what she would call the edge of her tongue; she would not bother to waste that on those she considered unworthy of it.

His face was pleasant and kindly, she concluded. A clever man, this; yet in some ways, helpless. She would like to feed him some of her possets, put a layer of fat on his bones with her butter. She'd warrant he gave too much thought to what went into his head and not enough to what went into his stomach.

“His verses were dedicated to the King,” said Jane. “And did the King accept them, Thomas?”

“He did. He took them in his own hands and complimented me upon them.”

His lips were smiling. Margaret left the little girls to come and stand close to him. She was so happy because this King loved him. They had nothing to fear from this King. She took his hand and pressed it.

“So the King likes verses!” said Mistress Middleton, her voice softening a little.

“Ah, madam,” said Thomas. “What the King likes today, may we hope Mistress Middleton will like tomorrow?”

“And he accepted them … from your hands?” demanded Mistress Middleton.

“He did indeed.” Thomas was remembering it all. It was only about his writing that he was a little vain; he made excuses for his vanity. Artistic talent, he was wont to say, is a gift from God. But he was conscious of his vanity, and he mocked himself while he treasured words of praise. And now at this moment he could not help recalling with pleasure the King's delight in his verses.

As for Alice Middleton, she was looking at him with new respect.

For a lawyer and a scholar she had little to spare; for a man who had spoken with the King she had much.


* * *

THE NEXT two years were eventful ones for Margaret. For one thing, two people became very important to her. Both of these were visitors to the house; although one of these was a neighbor and a constant caller, the other lived with them as one of the family.

The first was Alice Middleton who made regular calls. Margaret did not love Mistress Middleton, although she recognized that lady's wish to be kind. Mistress Middleton believed that everyone who did not do as she did must surely be wrong. If any household task was not done according to Mistress Middleton's rule, it was not done in the right way. She would teach them how to bake bread in the only way to bake the best bread, and that was the way she always did it; she would show them how to salt meat in order to make the best of it. She would show how children should be brought up. They should be obedient to their elders; they should be whipped when stubborn; they should be seen and not heard, and not talk in heathen tongues which their elders could not understand.

What disturbed Margaret more than anything was the fact that her father did not feel as she did toward Mistress Middleton. She had watched his face as he listened to her tirades, and had seen the amused twitch of his lips; sometimes he would talk with her, as though he were luring her on to taunt him. She was a rude and stupid woman; yet he seemed to like her rudeness and her stupidity. And Margaret, who followed her father in most things, could not do so in this.

The other person was the exalted Erasmus.

Him, Margaret regarded with awe. He was now more famous than he had been in the days when he had first come to England. He was known all over the world as the greatest Greek scholar, and he was preparing to write a critical edition of the Greek text of the New Testament.

Margaret could understand her fathers affection for this great man, for Erasmus was worthy of his regard and friendship as Madam Alice could never be.

This Erasmus was a sick man. There were days when he could do nothing but lie abed. On such days Margaret would wait upon him, bringing to him the books he asked for. He had a great affection for Margaret and she was pleased that this should be so, largely because of the delight it gave her father. Thomas would openly sue for praise for his daughter as he never would for himself and Margaret felt very tender toward him as she watched his delight in the compliments Erasmus paid her.

Once Erasmus said: “I do not believe there is another girl—or boy—of this child's age who can write and speak the Latin tongue as she does.” And afterward her father said to her: “Meg, this is one of the happiest days of my life. It is a day I shall remember on the day I die. I shall say to myself when I find death near me: ‘The great Erasmus said that of my daughter, my Meg.’”

She thought a good deal about Erasmus. He might be a greater scholar than her father—though she doubted this—but she did not believe he was such a brave man. There was a certain timidity in his manner; this had been apparent once when Alice Middleton was present and had spoken quite sharply to him—for Alice was no respecter of scholars, and the fame of Erasmus had not reached her ears. She obviously did not believe that a poor wisp of a man who, as she said, looked as though a puff from the west wind could blow him flat, was as important as they seemed to think. “Scholar! Foreigner!” she snorted. The sort of men she respected were those like the King: more than six feet tall and broad with it; a man who would know what to do with a baron of beef and a fat roast peacock… aye, and anything a good cook could put before him. She liked not this sly-looking man with his aches and pains. Greatest scholar in the world! That might be. But the world could keep its scholars, declared Mistress Alice.

Margaret said to Mercy: “No; he has not Father's bravery. He would not have stood before Parliament and spoken against the King.”

“He has not Father's kindness,” answered Mercy. “He would mock where Father pitied.”

“But how could we expect him to be like Father!” cried Meg; and they laughed.

Erasmus spent his days writing what he called an airy trifle, a joke to please his host who loved a joke, he knew, better than anything. He was too tired, he told Margaret, to work on his Testament. He must perfect his Greek before he attempted such a great task. He must feel sure of his strength. In the meantime he would write In Praise of Folly.

He read aloud to Thomas when he came home; and sometimes Thomas would sit by his friends bed with Margaret on one side of him, Mercy on the other; he would put an arm about them both, and when he laughed and complimented Erasmus so that Erasmus's pale face was flushed with pleasure, then Margaret believed that there was all the happiness in the world in that room.

Erasmus poked fun at everybody… even at the scholar with his sickly face and lantern jaws; he laughed at the sportsman for his love of slaughter, and the pilgrims for going on pilgrimages when they ought to have been at home; he laughed at the superstitious who paid large sums for the sweat of saints; he laughed at schoolmasters who, he said, were kings in the little kingdoms of the young. No one was spared—not even lawyers and writers, although he was, Margaret noted, less severe with the latter than with the rest of the world.

And this was written with the utmost lightness, so that it delighted not only Thomas, but others of their friends, to picture Folly, in cap and bells, on a rostrum addressing mankind.

He stayed over a year in the house, and while he was there Thomas was made Under-Sheriff of the City of London, which was an honor he greatly appreciated. Alice Middleton, still a constant visitor, was delighted with this elevation.

“Ah,” Margaret heard Thomas say to her, “how pleasant it is to enjoy the reflected honors! We have neither to deserve them nor to uphold them. We bask in the soft light, whilst the other toils in the heat. The temperate rather than the torrid zone. So much more comfortable, eh, Mistress Middleton?”

“Tilly valley! I know not what you mean,” she told him sharply. “So you but waste your breath to say it.”

He explained to Margaret as he always explained everything: “The Mayor of London and the Sheriffs are not lawyers; therefore they need a barrister to advise them on various matters of law. That my Margaret, is the task of the Under-Sheriff who is now your father.”

And when he dealt with these cases he refrained, if the litigants were unable to pay them, from accepting the fees which had always previously been paid. This became known throughout the City. It was about this time that the people of London began to love him.