A MOTLEY COMPANY 37 should affect, for the sleeves of his robe are trimmed with the finest fur, and a golden love-knot pin holds his hood in place. Clearly ring the bells on his horse's bridle; hare-hunting and a feast off a fat swan are more to him than the rule of St. Benedict and all the holy books in his cell. Beside this disgrace to his religious profession is a mendicant friar who is no whit better than his fellow, for he can sing tender songs to his harp, treats the countryfolk in the taverns, and knows well how to please the women with timely gifts of needles and knives. Follow these a merchant and two learned men. Well does the merchant know the rate of exchange, and better still does he know how to secure his own interest. Not so the clerk of Oxenford, hollowcheeked and lean, dressed in threadbare clothes and riding a bare-ribbed horse. As yet he is unbeneficed; but his books are his only joy. His fellow is a law serjeant in good practice, and at his heels comes the Franklin, a representative of a very large class who held land of their own, but were not of gentle birth. A lower social stratum is represented by a haberdasher, a carpenter, a weaver, a dyer, and a tapster; all of consideration in their own grade, and likely to become aldermen some day. As wealthy as any is the miller, a big-bodied fellow, with a spade beard, red, like a fox, and as cunning. He well knows how to take a share of the corn his customers bring him to grind. He wears a white coat and a blue hood; plays on the bagpipes, and tells stories fitted to make the young and innocent blush. The wife of Bath is every whit as indelicate. She has been married five times, and of love, says Chaucer, "she knew the oldè dance." Therefore she is privileged. A shipman from Dartmouth has with him a bottle of Burgundy stolen from his captain's cabin, from which he thinks it no sin to drink when on pious pilgrimage. A doctor of physic, a cook, a poor parson, a ploughman, a reeve, or estate agent, a manciple, and two disgraceful characters-a summoner and a pardonermake up the total of the company. The summoner has a fiery face, which nothing but abstinence from drink will assuage; and the pardoner is totally without conscience or morals of any kind. He makes a good living by selling pardons from the Pope, and gets more by the sale of relics in one day than the parson can earn in two months. When these pilgrims rode forth on that April morning-nine and twenty of them-from the "Tabard," to seek Becket's shrine, they started from the ultimate suburb of London. Picture that, Londoners of to-day, who find streets unceasing until Blackheath is gained, and no true roadside country this side of Gravesend! The thymy air then blew in at the casements of the many inns of Southwark, and the views thence extended over fields and meadows where countless chimneys now pollute the sky. Some way down the Kent Road ran a little stream across the highway-"Saint Thomas à Watering" the ford was called, and here the pilgrims made their first halt "And forth we riden a litel more than pas, |