Excerpt: ...her mind down to this text, for she had been wondering if indeed her time were at an end before it had begun. She said: 'I have never loved this play very well, ' to excuse herself. 'Then you are out of the fashion, ' Mary said coldly, 'for this Menechmi is prized here above all the rest, and shall be played at Winchester's before his Highness.' Katharine bowed her head submissively, and read the words again. 'I remember me, ' she said, 'I had this play in a manuscript where your commetavi read commentavi.' Mary ...
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Excerpt: ...her mind down to this text, for she had been wondering if indeed her time were at an end before it had begun. She said: 'I have never loved this play very well, ' to excuse herself. 'Then you are out of the fashion, ' Mary said coldly, 'for this Menechmi is prized here above all the rest, and shall be played at Winchester's before his Highness.' Katharine bowed her head submissively, and read the words again. 'I remember me, ' she said, 'I had this play in a manuscript where your commetavi read commentavi.' Mary kept her eyes upon the girl's face, and said: 'Signifying?' 'Why, it signifies, ' Katharine said, 'that Messenio did well mark a face. If you read commetavi it should mean that he scratched it with his nails so that it resembled a harrowed field; if commentavi, that he bethumped it with his fist so that bruises came out like the stops on a fair writing.' 'It is true that you are a good Latinist, ' Mary said 122 expressionlessly. 'Bring me my inkhorn to that window. I will write down your commentavi.' Katharine lifted the inkhorn from its hole in the arm of the chair and gracefully followed the stiff and rigid figure into the embrasure of a distant window. Mary bent her head over the book that she held in her hand, and writing in the margin, she uttered: 'Pity that such an excellent Latinist should meddle in matters that nothing concern her.' Katharine held the inkhorn carefully, as if it had been a precious vase. 'If you will bid me do naught but serve you, I will do naught else, ' she said. 'I will neither bid thee nor aid thee, ' Mary answered. 'The Bishop of Winchester claims thy service. Serve him as thou wilt.' 'I would serve my mistress in serving him, ' Katharine said. 'He is a man I love little.' Mary pulled suddenly from her bodice a piece of crumpled parchment that had been torn across. She thrust it into Katharine's free hand. 'Such letters I have had written me by my father's men, ' she said. 'If this bishop should come to be my father's...
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