The widow paused with her rolling-pin suspended. “That meadow again? And no doubt you wet your feet!”
“On my word, good widow,” Hugh laughed, “my kinsfolk have trusted me abroad without a nurse for several years now.”
“The more fools they!” she replied, smacking the pastry smartly once more.
Profiting by the pause, Hugh reached one arm in at the window and helped himself to a strip of pie-crust, all hot and newly baked, that lay there; he might repress his early fondness for honey and jam, but crisp pastry was still too great a temptation for him to resist.
“That’s a right Roundhead trick to come thieving at a poor woman’s window!” said the widow.
“Was there never such a thing as a Cavalier thief?” Hugh suggested.
“I never speak treason, sir. There do be some that say there is a garrison yonder at Woodstead Manor that never was known to pay for what it lives by, but I speak no ill of the king’s men, you’ll note.”
Hugh had cause enough to note and remember the conversation a few days later. Of a dull gray afternoon he had taken himself to his chamber, dutifully to practise thrusts with his sword at a round mark on the wainscot, an exercise which proved tedious, so he was glad enough when a noise of horses stamping and men calling in the yard below gave him an excuse for running to the window. At the front of the cottage nothing was to be seen, so, flinging on his coat, he ran downstairs into the kitchen, whence came the sound of high talk. Bursting into the room, he found Nancy crouched by the fireplace, and Ralph skulking by her, while at the door stood Widow Flemyng, arms akimbo, in hot discourse with a cross-eyed trooper, who wore the king’s colors.
“I tell you, it shall not be put up!” the man was blustering. “We’d scarce set foot in your stable when your rascal would be breaking a stave across Garrett’s head.”
“And I tell you, you shall put up with it!” retorted the widow. “Do you think to come plundering decent loyal bodies, you minching thieves? Not a step do you stir into this house. Reach me hither the kettle, you white-livered Ralph.”