Page:Tales from Chaucer.djvu/92

 things, than with the diseased and the mendicant. Wherever he spied a chance of profit or advantage there did he direct all his courtesy, and humbly ply his services. He was the expertest beggar in the convent, and obtained a grant that none of the brethren should cross him in his haunts; for if a widow had barely a shoe to her foot, so sweet to her ear was his, 'As it was in the beginning,' &c., that he would extort a farthing from her before his departure. Of him it might be said that 'the labourer was of more worth than his hire.' On settling days he was a man of importance, not like a cloisterer, or poor scholar with his threadbare cloak, but rather as master of the order, or even like the Pope himself.

He wore a short cloak of double-woven worsted, round as a lady's dress, uncrushed. He would lisp in his speech from wantonness, or to give effect to his English: and while he was singing, his eyes would twinkle like the stars in a frosty night. The name of this worthy limiter was Hubert.

There was a with a forked beard,