And, as she will not have me stay,
I'll travel forth upon my way."
"Girls, how are you?" said the gamekeeper, standing still: "why don't you sing louder?"
The girls began to giggle, and held their aprons to their mouths. Babbett found her tongue first, and said, "Thank you, mister, we are only singing for ourselves, and so we hear it if we sing ever so low: we don't sing for other people."
"Whisht!" said the gamekeeper: "the little tongue cuts like a sickle."
"Sickle or straight, it's as broad as it's long; whoever don't like it may talk to suit himself if he can," replied Babbett. Tony jogged her, saying, half aloud, "You're as rough as a hedgehog, you Babbett."
"Oh, I can stand a joke as well as the next one," said the gamekeeper, making the best of a bad job.
For all that, the girls were a good deal embarrassed, and did just the worst thing to put an end to it: they rose and took each others' arms to go home.
"May I go with you, ladies?" said the gamekeeper again.
"It's a high road and a wide road," said Babbett.