“Not she,” said Catherine. “Come, away ye go, if y'are minded.”
“Indeed,” said Margaret, “methinks I should not be such a damper at table if I could come to 't warm from a good sermon.”
“Then you must be brisk,” observed Joan. “See the folk are wending that way, and as I live, there goes the holy friar. Oh, bless us and save us, Margaret; the hermit! We forgot.” And this active woman bounded out of the house, and ran across the road, and stopped the friar. She returned as quickly. “There, I was bent on seeing him nigh hand.”
“What said he to thee?”
“Says he, 'My daughter, I will go to him ere sunset, God willing.' The sweetest voice. But oh, my mistresses, what thin cheeks for a young man, and great eyes, not far from your colour, Margaret.”
“I have a great mind to go hear him,” said Margaret. “But my cap is not very clean, and they will all be there in their snow-white mutches.”
“There, take my handkerchief out of the basket,” said Catherine; “you cannot have the child, I want him for my poor Kate. It is one of her ill days.”
Margaret replied by taking the boy upstairs. She found Kate in bed.
“How art thou, sweetheart? Nay, I need not ask. Thou art in sore pain; thou smilest so, See,' I have brought thee one thou lovest.”
“Two, by my way of counting,” said Kate, with an angelic smile. She had a spasm at that moment would have made some of us roar like bulls.