Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/196

 and love, poor dears, and their sweet little bodies and smooth dainty skins had to be filled with sweetmeats and choice wines; and besides these they had several small necessities without which ladies cannot get on, but which cost a good deal of money when one has to pay the shot for a dozen or more. Whence it came about that after a few months of this fine fun it became expedient that Sir Roger de Sco. Mauro should try to draw his purse strings in very tight, and send his merry guests about their business if he did not want them to run away with his woods and meadows, his commons, estovers, housebotes and heybotes, mills, fishpools, and everything that he had. But yet he was very loathe to do this, and had long conversation with Master Robert Pykott his steward, Father Hadrian his chaplain, and Dom. Hierome Jessaye, a man of law, who was full of expedients, and had assisted at synods like these many times before. And so it came to pass that Sir Roger was forced often to leave all the mirth, laughter, and mellow sounding of the lutes, vyalls, and hand-organs, the fantastic quips of gallantry and the beautiful theories of the wondrous clerk of the Academy, the tales of chivalry and love, and the swift ball play against the high wall at the angle where it joins the tower; to meet the three sages who were all of them a little musty, and whose talk was dull. Inside a room of the tower they sat, with chests and hanapers and coffers all around them, and before the steward and the man-of-law were great vessels of ink, and long vicious-looking goose-