'They never let you go, them spiteful ones. I knowed a plasterer
in Eighteen hundred Sixty-one - down to the wells. He was a
Frenchy - a bad enemy he was.'
'I had mine too. He was an Italian, called Benedetto. I met him
first at Oxford on Magdalen Tower when I was learning my trade
-or trades, I should say. A bad enemy he was, as you say, but he
came to be my singular good friend,' said Hal as he put down the
mallet and settled himself comfortably.

'What might his trade have been - plastering' Mr Springett asked.

'Plastering of a sort. He worked in stucco - fresco we call it.
Made pictures on plaster. Not but what he had a fine sweep of the
hand in drawing. He'd take the long sides of a cloister, trowel on
his stuff, and roll out his great all-abroad pictures of saints and
croppy-topped trees quick as a webster unrolling cloth almost.
Oh, Benedetto could draw, but 'a was a little-minded man,
professing to be full of secrets of colour or plaster - common
tricks, all of 'em - and his one single talk was how Tom, Dick or
Harry had stole this or t'other secret art from him.'

'I know that sort,' said Mr Springett. 'There's no keeping peace
or making peace with such. An' they're mostly born an' bone idle.'

'True. Even his fellow-countrymen laughed at his jealousy. We
two came to loggerheads early on Magdalen Tower. I was a
youngster then. Maybe I spoke my mind about his work.'

'You shouldn't never do that.' Mr Springett shook his head.
'That sort lay it up against you.'