"It concerns no one what I do below.
'Tis an amusement of my own, no more." As he stood there, pale and anxious, with weary eyes, it seemed to me an amusement which yielded him but little sport.

However, I did not dispute the matter, and we said no more about it.
But after that day I observed that my master, although he seemed to like me less, was more sparing of his bitter words than heretofore.

Whereby I guessed plainly enough that the amusement he spoke of, were it to come to the ears of the Master and Wardens of the Company, would get him into no little trouble.
Mistress Walgrave, his wife, as I said, was ever my good friend.

She was no common woman, and how those two made a match of it always puzzled me.

Before she came to England (so she had told me often), she lived at Rochelle, in France, where her first husband was a merchant in lace.
Then, when he died of the plague ten years ago, she came with her two young children (the elder being but five years), to her mother's home in Kent, where Robert Walgrave, being on a visit to Canterbury, met her, and offered her marriage.