“See there, Master Alderman”
Their heads had been near together over the starling, but at this objurgation they started apart, both crimson in the cheeks, and Dennet flew up to her father, bird in hand, crying, “O father, father! suffer her not. He did no wrong. He was cutting my bird’s wing.”
“I suffer no one to insult my child in her own house,” said the alderman, so much provoked as to be determined to put an end to it all at once. “Stephen Birkenholt, come here.”
Stephen came, cap in hand, red in the face, with a strange tumult in his heart, ready to plead guilty, though he had done nothing, but imagining at the moment that his feelings had been actions.
“Stephen,” said the alderman, “thou art a true and worthy lad! Canst thou love my daughter?”
“I—I crave your pardon, sir, there was no helping it,” stammered Stephen, not catching the tone of the strange interrogation, and expecting any amount of terrible consequences for his presumption.
“Then thou wilt be a faithful spouse to her, and son to me? And Dennet, my daughter, hast thou any distaste to this youth—though he bring nought but skill and honesty?”
“O, father, father! I—I had rather have him than any other!”
“Then, Stephen Birkenholt and Dennet Headley, ye shall be man and wife, so soon as the young man’s term be over, and he be a freeman—so he continue to be that which he seems at present. Thereto I give my word, I, Giles Headley, Alderman of the Chepe Ward, and thereof ye are witnesses, all of you. And God’s blessing on it.”