eBooks Base 2000

I saw him walk up the jetty in a
new red cloak, a personable man with a broad beard and a jolly laugh. I
knew him by repute as the luckiest of the Flemish venturers. In him I saw
my fortune. That night he supped at my uncle's house and a week later he
sought me in marriage. My uncle would have bargained, but I had
become a grown woman and silenced him. With Willebald I did not chaffer,
for I read his heart and knew that in a little he would be wax to me. So we
were wed, and I took to him no dowry but a ring which came to me from my
forebears, and a brain that gold does not buy."
The monkey by her side broke into a chattering.
"Peace, Peterkin," she said. "You mind me of the babbling of the
merchant-folk, when I spurred Willebald into new roads. He had done as his
father before him, and bought wool and salted fish from the English, paying
with the stuffs of our Flemish looms. A good trade of small and sure
profits, but I sought bigger quarries. For, mark you, there was much in
England that had a value in this country of ours which no Englishman
guessed.


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