"Is it soothly thus?" replied Amphillis, her surprise scarcely lessened by hearing of such unusual conduct on the part of the precise Lady Foljambe. "Verily, but--And how do my good master mine uncle, and my good cousin Alexandra?"

"Saundrina's wed, and so is my father. And Saundrina leads Clement a life, and Mistress Altham leads my father another. I was none so sorry to come away, I can tell thee. I hate to be ruled like a ledger and notched like a tally!"

"Thou shalt find things be well ruled in this house, Rica," said Amphillis, thinking to herself that Ricarda and Agatha would make a pair, and might give their mistress some trouble. "But whom hath mine uncle wed, that is thus unbuxom [disobedient] to him?"

"Why, Mistress Regina, the goldsmith's daughter, that counts herself worth us all, and would fain be a queen in the patty-shop, and cut us all out according to her will."

"But, Ricarda, I reckoned Mistress Regina a full good and wise woman."

"'Good and wise!' She may soon be so. I hate goodness and wisdom.

There's never a bit of jollity for her. 'Tis all 'thou shalt not.' She might as well be the Ten Commandments and done with it."

"Wouldst thou fain not keep the Ten Commandments, Rica?"

"I'd fain have my own way, and be jolly. Oh, she keeps the house well enough. Father saith he's tenfold more comfortable sithence her coming."

"I thought thou saidst she led him an ill, diseaseful [Note 1] life?"

"Well, so did I. Father didn't."

"Oh!" said Amphillis, in an enlightened tone.

"And she's a rare hand at the cooking, that will I say. She might have made patties all her life. She catches up everything afore you can say 'Jack Robinson.' She says it's by reason she's a Dutchwoman [Note 2].

Rubbish! as if a lot of nasty foreigners could do aught better, or half as well, as English folks!"

"Be all foreigners nasty?" asked Amphillis, thinking of her mistress.

"Of course they be! Phyllis, what's come o'er thee?"

"I knew not anything had."

"Lack-a-day! thou art tenfold as covenable and deliver [Note 3] as thou wert wont to be. Derbyshire hath brightened up thy wits."

Amphillis smiled. Privately, she thought that if her wits were brightened, it was mainly by being let alone and allowed to develop free of perpetual repression.

"I have done nought to bring the same about, Ricarda. But must I conceive that Master Winkfield's diseaseful life, then, is in thine eyes, or in his own?"

"He reckons himself the blissfullest man under the sun," said Ricarda, as they rose from the table: "and he dare not say his soul is his own; not for no price man should pay him."

Amphillis privately thought the bliss of a curious kind.

"Phyllis!" said her cousin, suddenly, "hast learned to hold thy tongue?"

"I count I am metely well learned therein, Rica."

"Well, mind thou, not for nothing of no sort to let on to my Lady that Father is a patty-maker. I were put forth of the door with no more ado, should it come to her ear that I am not of gentle blood like thee."

"Ricarda! Is my Lady, then, deceived thereon?"

"'Sh--'sh! She thinks I am a Neville, and thy cousin of the father's side. Thee hold thy peace, and all shall be well."

"But, Rica! that were to tell a lie."

"Never a bit of it! Man can't tell a lie by holding his peace."

"Nay, I am not so sure thereof as I would like. This I know, he may speak one by his life no lesser than his words."

"Amphillis, if thou blurt out this to my Lady, I'll hate thee for ever and ever, Amen!" said Ricarda.

"I must meditate thereon," was her cousin's answer. "Soothly, I would not by my good will do thee an ill turn, Rica; and if it may stand with my conscience to be silent, thou hast nought to fear. Yet if my Lady ask me aught touching thee, that may not be thus answered, I must speak truth, and no lie."

"A murrain take thy conscience! Canst not say a two-three times the Rosary of our Lady to ease it?"

"Maybe," said Amphillis, drily, "our Lady hath no more lore for lying than I have."

"Mistress Ricarda!" said Agatha, joining them as they rose from the table, "I do right heartily pray you of better acquaintance. I trust you and I be of the same fashion of thinking, and both love laughter better than tears."

"In good sooth, I hate long faces and sad looks," said Ricarda, accepting Agatha's offered kiss of friendship.

"You be not an ill-matched pair," added Amphillis, laughing. "Only, I pray you, upset not the quirle by over much prancing."

Note 1. Still used in its original sense of uncomfortable.

Note 2. The Dutch were then known as High Dutch, the Germans as Low Dutch.

Note 3. Agreeable and ready in conversation.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

BEATEN BACK.

"I know not why my path should be at times So straitly hedged, so strangely barred before: I only know G.o.d could keep wide the door; But I can trust."

"Mistress Perrote, I pray you counsel me. I am sore put to it to baffle my cousin's inquirations touching our Lady. How she cometh to know there is any such cannot I say; but I may lightly guess that Agatha hath let it 'scape: and in old days mine uncle was wont to say, none never could keep hidlis [secrets] from Ricarda. Truly, might I have known aforehand my Lady Foljambe's pleasure, I could have found to mine hand to pray her not to advance Ricarda hither: not for that I would stand in her way, but for my Lady's sake herself."

"I know. Nay, as well not, Phyllis. It should tend rather to thine own disease, for folk might lightly say thou wert jealous and unkindly to thy kin. The Lord knoweth wherefore such things do hap. At times I think it be to prevent us from being here in earth more blissful than it were good for us to be. As for her inquirations, parry them as best thou mayest; and if thou canst not, then say apertly [openly] that thou art forbidden to hold discourse thereanentis."

Amphillis shook her head. She pretty well knew that such an a.s.sertion would whet Ricarda's curiosity, and increase her inquisitive queries.

"Mistress Perrote, are you ill at ease?"

"Not in health, thank G.o.d. But I am heavy of heart, child. Our Lady is in evil case, and she is very old."

We should not now call a woman very old who was barely sixty years of age; we scarcely think that more than elderly. But in 1373, when the numerous wars and insurrections of the earlier half of the century had almost decimated the population, so that, especially in the upper cla.s.ses, an old man was rarely to be seen, and when also human life was usually shorter than in later times, sixty was the equivalent of eighty or ninety with us, while seventy was as wonderful as we think a hundred.

King Edward was in his second childhood when he died at sixty-five; while "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," scarcely pa.s.sed his fifty-ninth birthday.