"What!" screamed the housewife, "when the bushel of rye costs but a groat! What! me spend a month's meal and meat and fire on such vanity as that: the lightning from Heaven would fall on me, and my children would all be beggars.""Mother!" sighed little Catherine, imploringly.
"Oh! it is in vain, Kate," said Gerard, with a sigh."I shall have to give it up, or ask the dame Van Eyck.She would give it me, but I think shame to be for ever taking from her.""It is not her affair," said Catherine, very sharply; "what has she to do coming between me and my sun?" and she left the room with a red face.Little Catherine smiled.Presently the housewife returned with a gracious, affectionate air, and two little gold pieces in her hand.
"There, sweetheart," said she, "you won't have to trouble dame or demoiselle for two paltry crowns."But on this Gerard fell a thinking how he could spare her purse.
"One will do, mother.I will ask the good monks to let me send my copy of their 'Terence:' it is on snowy vellum, and I can write no better: so then I shall only need six sheets of vellum for my borders and miniatures, and gold for my ground, and prime colours - one crown will do.'
"Never tyne the ship for want of a bit of tar, Gerard," said his changeable mother.But she added, "Well, there, I will put the crown in my pocket.That won't be like putting it back in the box.
Going to the box to take out instead of putting in, it is like going to my heart with a knife for so many drops of blood.You will be sure to want it, Gerard.The house is never built for less than the builder counted on."Sure enough, when the time came, Gerard longed to go to Rotterdam and see the Duke, and above all to see the work of his competitors, and so get a lesson from defeat.And the crown came out of the housewife's pocket with a very good grace.Gerard would soon be a priest.It seemed hard if he might not enjoy the world a little before separating himself from it for life.
The night before he went, Margaret Van Eyck asked him to take a letter for her, and when he came to look at it, to his surprise he found it was addressed to the Princess Marie, at the Stadthouse in Rotterdam.
The day before the prizes were to be distributed, Gerard started for Rotterdam in his holiday suit, to wit, a doublet of silver-grey cloth, with sleeves, and a jerkin of the same over it, but without sleeves.From his waist to his heels he was clad in a pair of tight-fitting buckskin hose fastened by laces (called points) to his doublet.His shoes were pointed, in moderation, and secured by a strap that passed under the hollow of the foot.On his head and the back of his neck he wore his flowing hair, and pinned to his back between his shoulders was his hat: it was further secured by a purple silk ribbon little Kate had passed round him from the sides of the hat, and knotted neatly on his breast; below his hat, attached to the upper rim of his broad waist-belt, was his leathern wallet.When he got within a league of Rotterdam he was pretty tired, but he soon fell in with a pair that were more so.He found an old man sitting by the roadside quite worn out, and a comely young woman holding his hand, with a face brimful of concern.The country people trudged by, and noticed nothing amiss; but Gerard, as he passed, drew conclusions.
Even dress tells a tale to those who study it so closely as he did, being an illuminator.The old man wore a gown, and a fur tippet, and a velvet cap, sure signs of dignity; but the triangular purse at his girdle was lean, the gown rusty, the fur worn, sure signs of poverty.The young woman was dressed in plain russet cloth: yet snow-white lawn covered that part of her neck the gown left visible, and ended half way up her white throat in a little band of gold embroidery; and her head-dress was new to Gerard: instead of hiding her hair in a pile of linen or lawn, she wore an open network of silver cord with silver spangles at the interstices: in this her glossy auburn hair was rolled in front into two solid waves, and supported behind in a luxurious and shapely mass.His quick eye took in all this, and the old man's pallor, and the tears in the young woman's eyes.So when he had passed them a few yards, he reflected, and turned back, and came towards them bashfully.