THREE:The positions of husband and wife were now reversed. It was Reuben who sulked and gloomed, looking at the baby askance, while Naomi moved in a daydream of peace and rapture and desire satisfied. She was too happy to care much about her husband's disappointment. She would never have believed it if anyone had told her in the first weeks of her marriage that she could have a joy and not mind if he did not share it, a child and not fret if he did not love it. But now her child sufficed her, or rather she had learned the lesson of wives, to suffice herself, and could love and rejoice without a comrade.We have as yet confined our observations to the bondmen; but in 1381, an act of ill-judged policy of the nine nobles and prelates who formed the council of young Richard gave rise to a sort of coalition among the lower classes. This act was the famous tax of three groats upon every individual who had attained the age of fifteen. The hearth-money, which had been enforced by the Black Prince upon the inhabitants of Guienne, and which had probably formed the precedent for this tax, had not worked well, and there appeared little chance that the present exaction, framed as it was by those who directed the royal councils, would work better. Certain wealthy individuals contracted with the government for the collection of the tax, and private rapacity thus rendered the imposition more obnoxious than it otherwise might have been.

THREE:"I ask your pardon, Calverley," replied the steward, "but you so seldom care for wine, that one hardly thinks of offering it to you: here, however, is a cup that will do your heart good."

THREE: