“Yester, the Prince did seek her in the throne room. He’d tied his kerchief to a sack and filled it full o’ blue-bells, and minced him ’long the halls astrewing blossoms and singing like to a frozen pump.
“Within the chamber, Ermaline did hide her face in dreading to behold him come, but at the door he spied the dear and bounded like a puppy ’cross the flags, apelting her with blooms and sputtering ’mid tee-hees. She, tho’, did spy him first, and measured her his sight and sudden slipped her ’neath the table shroud. And he, Anne, I swear, sprawled him in his glee and rose to find her gone. And whacked my shin, the ass, acause I heaved at shoulders.”
Anne.—“Ah, Dougal, ’tis a weary time, in truth. Thee hadst best to put it back, to court thy mistress’ whim. Good sleep, ye! And Dougal, I have a loving for the troubadour. Whence cometh he?”
Dougal.—“Put thy heart to rest, good Anne; he’s but a piper who doth knock the taber’s end and coaxeth trembling strings by which to sing. He came him out o’ nothing, like to the night or day. We waked to hear him singing ’neath the wall.”
Anne.—“Aye, but I do wag! For surely thee doth see how Ermaline doth court his song.”
Dougal.—“Nay, Anne, ’tis but to fill an empty day.”
When Patience had finished this she preened herself a little. “Did I not then spin a lengthy tale?” she asked. But immediately she began work upon another, a story of such length that it alone will make a book. It differs in many respects from her other works, particularly in the language, and from a literary standpoint is altogether the most amazing of her compositions. This, too, is dramatic in form, but scene often merges into scene without division, and it has more of the characteristics of the modern story. It is, however, medieval, but it is a tale of the fields, primarily, the heroine, Telka, being a farm lass, and the hero a field hand. Perhaps this is why the obscure dialectal forms of rural England of a time long gone by are woven into it. In this Patience makes an astonishingly free use of the prefix “a,” in place of a number of prefixes, such as “be” and “with,” now commonly used, and she attaches it to nouns and verbs and adjectives with such frequency as to make this usage a prominent feature of the diction. Let me introduce Telka in the words of Patience:
“Dewdamp soggeth grasses laid low aneath the blade at yester’s harvest, and thistle-bloom weareth at its crown a jewelled spray.
“Brown thrush, nested ’neath the thick o’ yonder shrub, hath preened her wings full long aneath the tender warmth o’ morning sun.