The first use she made of it was, though with infinite good humour, to repay her husband the smacks she had had of him, and, malgre his attempts to escape behind others of the company, she desisted not till all was returned with a handsome interest, to the exceeding good entertainment of her several guests. Jonas Tietape must needs put his unshapely person in the way, making of such grimaces as would have unsettled the solemnness of an owl, but the slipper spared not him any more than his host: certes he got it in places quite opposite to what the giver intended, for with his antics he so flung himself about, that what was aimed at his head lighted on his heels. He was as nimble at his tricks as a kitten-now with his heels in the air and his hands on the ground, or each following the other like the sails of a windmill, whilst the head seemed to be shifting of itself into all sorts of unnatural positions, with such ridiculous looks upon the ungainly countenance, all around laughed till their sides ached. And this of a surety did not lessen when the heads of two little dogs, doubtless made in some way uncomfortable by his strange movements, were seen suddenly to emerge from his pockets, with looks half of curiousness and half of alarm, making a sharp angry yelp, as if they liked not such uneasy motion.

The chamber in which these famous gambols

were going on, albeit no other than Dame Hart's kitchen, was as proper a one to sit in as might be found in dwellings of greater note than that of the jolly hatter of Stratford. There were huge rafters went across the top, whereon was fixed a rude rack containing divers flitches of bacon. The chimney was of exceeding capaciousness, projecting far into the room, having within, on each side, a commodious bench for the lovers of the chimney-corner, to whom the close neighbourhood of the firedogs offered most choice attractions. Above, was an old crossbow, a rusty helmet, a stout sword and buckler, and a quarter-staff worthy of the Miller of Mansfield.

On a shelf were arranged an excellent show of clean platters, and on another divers cooking utensils as bright and clean as scrubbing could make them. Bunches of dry herbs were swinging in one place, and a bag with seeds close upon it. A goodly bundle of corn, in the ear, and a fair bough of hawthorn, full of berries, were seen not far from them; a skin or two were stretched out and drying on the wainscot; there was no lack of blocks and irons such as appertained to the hatter's trade, but they were evidently put away for the nonce, wherever good room for them could be found; and a space, nigh upon a yard square, near the chimney, was covered with the choice ballads of the time.

A large oak table had been thrust on one side to allow the revellers more space, and a liberal show of stools were huddled together in another corner. A huge iron pot was swinging over the firedogs, to which a stout, middle-aged woman, with bare arms, and a face that rivalled them in ruddiness, ever and anon came out of some adjoining chamber to look to.

On one occasion she was accompanied with an exceeding ragged boy, who looked not to be more than some six or eight years old. He helped to carry a log from the wood-house to the kitchen-fire, which he seemed intent on with so monstrous an earnestness expressed in his fat, foolish visage, that it drew upon him the goodhumoured jesting of divers of the company, whilst, on a sudden, Jonas took him by the seat of his soiled and worn-out slops, held him at arms' length above his head, and made such monstrous mouths as though about to make a meal of him without any grace said. The boy struggled somewhat, to the great endangering of his sorry garments, that were so patched there was no telling of what colour they might have been, and he bawled most famously, but only as it seemed to the heightening of the mirth of the lookers-on.

The woman observed this with a huge indifferency, that some might have thought argued little

of the mother in her; though out of all doubt the chubby, dirty, and ragged little urchin, on whom the frolicsome Jonas was playing off his antics, was her child. She continued her attentions to the cookery, notwithstanding the boy occasionally set up so main a cry she must have been monstrous hard of hearing had she not known of it somewhere nigh upon the end of the street. At last it so chanced, his tormentor, by some odd contortions of all his limbs, thrust his unseemly head exactly upon the very opposite extremity to where nature had originally placed it, and hopped around the room on his two hands like a bird, supporting the frighted boy on his legs, which were standing above his head like a pair of monstrous horns. The shouts which this feat created made the mother turn from the pot she was so intent on.

"Heart o' grace, here's a sight to see!" exclaimed the woman, in no slight astonishment, and with some small spice of ill-nature. "Launce, lad! o' my life, thou ridest in a strange fashion but fair and softly, and the worst beast may be made to go its best paces."

Notwithstanding this consolation, the boy, who from the ordinary state of his apparel was known by gentle and simple as Ragged Launce, cried more lustily than ever: yet was his fright so ludicrous it was clean impossible for any to care about releasing

him from his unpleasant position: and the merry knave continued his leaping till he was tired.

"I have put thee to most unblessed extremities, friend Launce," said he, as he gravely placed him again upon his legs, and with a mock interest appeared to arrange in the best fashion the boy's dilapidated garments. "But thou hast bad habits, friend Launce," he continued, pulling the poor boy's linen out of the wide rents in his several garments" bad habits, which, albeit neither parson nor pedagogue, it is my vocation to mend. I prythee come to my dwelling when thou hast ceased to be wanted as a scarecrow, and I will do thy elbows all the service my craft can compass."

"In sooth, his apparelling be none o' the best," said his mother, with a show of gravity in the laugh she heartily joined in with those about her, "nor could it well have been so, seeing that after Dickon o' the Close had worn it seven year, he gave it to his ploughman Robin, who died the next sheep-shearing of the sweating sickness; and my poor husband, that's also dead and gone, had it on him in all seasons, thatching or ditching, felling or weeding from the Martinmas Master Gosling's brindled cow tossed Goody Skillet into the horsepond, till that very Allhallow's when Sir George Carew's Irish hound was drowned in the well; a