"I would not check thy thirst, sweet friend; drink while I talk to thee.

Thus it is: I would have thee know that I have taken a liking to thy craft and would fain have a taste of a beggar's life mine own self." Said the Beggar, "I marvel not that thou hast taken a liking to my manner of life, good fellow, but 'to like' and 'to do' are two matters of different sorts.

I tell thee, friend, one must serve a long apprenticeship ere one can learn to be even so much as a clapper-dudgeon, much less a crank or an Abraham-man.( 3) I tell thee, lad, thou art too old to enter upon that which it may take thee years to catch the hang of." (3) Classes of traveling mendicants that infested England as late as the middle of the seventeenth century.

VIDE Dakkar's ENGLISH VILLAINIES, etc.
"Mayhap that may be so," quoth Robin, "for I bring to mind that Gaffer Swanthold sayeth Jack Shoemaker maketh ill bread; Tom Baker maketh ill shoon.

Nevertheless, I have a mind to taste a beggar's life, and need but the clothing to be as good as any." "I tell thee, fellow," said the Beggar, "if thou wert clad as sweetly as good Saint Wynten, the patron of our craft, thou wouldst never make a beggar.