THE CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY
wallets and drew out little dainties and sundry flasks and made us share with them: and piled more sticks on the fire from a heap at hand, and then was heard a crackling and hissing from the greener bark, joined to a gurgling noise as one flask after another was tossed into the air. "Certainly," said Tom, the Rubrican, "if this be a sample of your victual, I think you fare well, and I believe I shall take down my father's old vial and join your company." "Ah! sir," answered Piero Latini (a man with thin jaws that worked fast) "'tis not often that we sup so decently. But you must know that having our purses full this evening we determined to give our bellies good cheer, and looked about us to find a confectioner. And after some dispute we fixed on a little shop near the bridge, with a window hanging over the road; and bade the girl who waited bring us the choicest delicates she had. But this wench was one of your modest maidens with a black and roving eye, who see more of what goes on in the street than in the shop, so she called her father, who was certainly a very capable man and a complete cook. And he soon filled our wallets with savoury pies, brawn, tongues, sausages, sweet-cakes, confects, tarts, and puddings, and as he brought them out from one bin or another described each piece very exquisitely, telling us its properties and good parts, and finished up by asking a scandalous sum the which we brought down to half with a little trouble. Now this piece I am eating is a fair sample of his craft, it is, he told us, a compost of capon's flesh, and veal, and pigeons, and ham,
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