I was slow to learn that tongue; but Ann's head was not less apt than my
brother's, and he was eager and diligent to keep her good speed at the
like mark with his own, as she was so quick to apprehend. Thus both were
at last forward enough to put Greek into German, and then Magister Peter
was bidden to lend them his aid. Now, the change in the worthy man,
after eating for four years at our table, was such that many an one would
have said it was a miracle. At his first coming to us he himself said he
weened he was a doomed son of ill-luck, and he scarce dared look man or
woman in the face; and what a good figure he made now, notwithstanding
the divers pranks played on his simplicity by my brothers and their
fellows, nay, and some whiles by me.

Many an one before this has marked that the god Amor is the best
schoolmaster; and when our Magister had learnt to stoop less, nay almost
to hold himself straight, when as now, he wore his good new coat with
wide hanging sleeves, tight-fitting hose, a well-stiffened, snow-white
collar, and even a smart black feather in his beretta, when he not alone
smoothed his hair but anointed it, all this, in its beginnings, was by
reason of his great and true love for my Ann, while she was yet but a
child.

My cautious Cousin Maud had, it is true, done the blind god of Love good
service; for many a time she would, with her own hand, set some matter
straight which the Magister had put on all askew, and on divers occasions
would give him a piece of fine cloth, and with it the cost of the
tailor's work, in bright new coin wrapped in colored paper. She brought
him to order and to keep his hours, and when grave speech availed not she
could laugh at him with friendly mockery, such as hurts no man, inasmuch
as it is the outcome of a good heart. Thus it was, that, by the time
when Herdegen was to go to the high school at Erfurt, Magister Peter was