"The saints forefend that you should treat me ill!" said the butcher in terror.
Here he took from his girdle a well-filled purse, and continued, "I would fain be a butcher, this day, and sell meat at Nottingham town.
"Heaven bless ye, good Robin," cried the butcher right joyfully, "that can I!" And he leaped down forthwith from the cart, and handed Robin the reins in exchange for the purse.
So saying he donned the butcher's blouse and apron, and, climbing into the cart, drove merrily down the road to the town.
"Now, by Our Lady's grace," cried the Butcher, "well do I know thy name, and many a time have I heard thy deeds both sung and spoken of.
"At four marks do I value meat, cart, and mare," quoth the Butcher, "but if I do not sell all my meat I will not have four marks in value."
Now, I would fain be a butcher for the day and sell my meat in Nottingham Town.
"Now may the blessings of all the saints fall on thine honest head!" cried the Butcher right joyfully, as he leaped down from his cart and took the purse that Robin held out to him.
"Well; yes--she might," said the butcher, slowly, considering that he was giving a decided affirmative.
The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational spirit was roused a little.
"I tell no lies," said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as before, "and I contradick none--not if a man was to swear himself black: he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bargains.
But the butcher, having music in his soul, had listened with a divided desire for Tookey's defeat and for the preservation of the peace.
Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day, Whenever the
Butcher was by, The Beaver kept looking the opposite way, And appeared unaccountably shy.
"All
butchers are rich, and they never build until their pockets are so crammed as to force them to it.
Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the
butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open.
