“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.”
The Mistress. “And holding her tongue the last, and modesty the day after never at all.”
Marion. “Alack! Talk of my tongue. But I say no more. She under whose wing I live now deals the blow. I'm sped—'tis but a chambermaid gone. Catch what's left on't!” and she staggered and sank backwards on to the handsomest fellow in the room, which happened to be Gerard.
“Tic! tic!” cried he peevishly; “there, don't be stupid! that is too heavy a jest for me. See you not I am talking to the mistress?”
Marion resumed her elasticity with a grimace, made two little bounds into the middle of the floor, and there turned a pirouette. “There, mistress,” said she, “I give in; 'tis you that reigns supreme with the men, leastways with male children.”
“Young man,” said the mistress, “this girl is not so stupid as her deportment; in reading of faces, and frying of omelets, there we are great. 'Twould be hard if we failed at these arts, since they are about all we do know.”
“You do not quite take me, dame,” said Gerard. “That honesty in a face should shine forth to your experienced eye, that seems reasonable: but how by looking on Denys here could you learn his one little foible, his insanity, his miserable mulierosity?” Poor Gerard got angrier the more he thought of it.
“His mule—his what?” (crossing herself with superstitious awe at the polysyllable).