He had formerly served in a merchant's house at Venice.

There he had wed an Italian woman, and all his children, which were many, had, like her, hair and eyes as black as the devil.

For the sake of a "God repay thee!" this maid, named Ann, had been brought to mix with us daughters of noble houses.

"But we will harry her out," said Ursula, "you will see!" This shocked me sorely, and I said that would be cruel and I would have no part in such a matter; but Ursula laughed and said I was yet but a green thing, and turned away to the window-shelf where all the new-comers had laid out their sweetmeats at the behest of the eldest or first of the class; for, by old custom, all the sweetmeats brought by the novices on the first day were in common.
All the party crowded round the heap of sweetmeats, which waxed greater and greater, and I was standing among the others when I saw that the scribe's daughter Ann, Cinderella, was standing lonely and hanging her head by the tiled stove at the end of the room.

I forthwith hastened to her, pressed the little packet which Mistress Grosz had given me into her hand--for I had it still hidden in my poke--and, whispered to her: "I had two of them, little Ann; make haste and pour them on the heap." She gave me a questioning look with her great eyes, and when she saw that I meant it truly she nodded, and there was something in her tearful look which I never can forget; and I mind, too, that when I passed the little packet into her hand it seemed that I, and not she, had received the favor.
She gave the sweetmeats she had taken from me to the eldest, and spoke not a word, and did not seem to mark that they all mocked at the smallness of the packet.