"And how know you mine is not such a face?"
"Out, fie! it is the best face that has entered 'The Three Fish' this autumn."
"And mine, dame?" said Denys; "dost see no knavery here?"
She eyed him calmly. "Not such a good one as the lad's: nor ever will be. But it is the face of a true man. For all that," added she drily, "an I were ten years younger, I'd as lieve not meet that face on a dark night too far from home."
Gerard stared. Denys laughed. "Why, dame, I would but sip the night dew off the flower; and you needn't take ten years off, nor ten days, to be worth risking a scratched face for."
"There, our mistress," said Marion, who had just come in, "said I not t'other day, you could make a fool of them still, an if you were properly minded?"
"I dare say ye did: it sounds like some daft wench's speech."
"Dame," said Gerard, "this is wonderful."
"What? Oh: no, no, that is no wonder at all. Why, I have been here all my life: and reading faces is the first thing a girl picks up in an inn."
Marion.] "And frying eggs the second; no, telling lies; frying eggs is the third, though."