There was no better parson anywhere.  He taught his people to walk in Christ’s way.  But first he followed it himself.

Chaucer gives this good man a brother who is a plowman.

    “A true worker and a good was he,
    Living in peace and perfect charity.”

He could dig, and he could thresh, and everything to which he put his hand he did with a will.

Besides all the other religious folk there were a prioress and a nun.  In those days the convents were the only schools for fine ladies, and the prioress perhaps spent her days teaching them.  Chaucer makes her very prim and precise.

    “At meat well taught was she withal,
    She let no morsel from her lips fall,
    Nor wet her fingers in her sauce deep. 
    Well could she carry a morsel, and well keep
    That no drop might fall upon her breast.*

    In courtesy was set full mickle her lest.**
    Her over lip wiped she so clean,
    That in her cup there was no morsel seen
    Of grease, when she drunken had her draught.”

    It should be remembered that in those days forks were
unknown, and people used their fingers.
    *Pleasure.

And she was so tender hearted!  She would cry if she saw a mouse caught in a trap, and she fed her little dog on the best of everything.  In her dress she was very dainty and particular.  And yet with all her fine ways we feel that she was no true lady, and that ever so gently Chaucer is making fun of her.

Besides the prioress and the nun there was only one other woman in the company.  This was the vulgar, bouncing Wife of Bath.  She dressed in rich and gaudy clothes, she liked to go about to see and be seen and have a good time.  She had been married five times, and though she was getting old and rather deaf, she was quite ready to marry again, if the husband she had should die before her.

Chaucer describes nearly every one in the company, and last of all he pictures for us the host of the Tabard Inn.

    “A seemly man our host was withal
    For to have been a marshal in a hall. 
    A large man he was with eyen stepe,*
    A fairer burgesse was there none in Chepe,**
    Bold was his speech, and wise and well y-taught,
    And of manhood him lacked right naught,
    Eke thereto he was right a merry man.”

    Bright.
    *Cheapside, a street in London.

The host’s name was Harry Baily, a big man and jolly fellow who dearly loved a joke.  After supper was over he spoke to all the company gathered there.  He told them how glad he was to see them, and that he had not had so merry a company that year.  Then he told them that he had thought of something to amuse them on the long way to Canterbury.  It was this:—­