‘Go thy ways, my bairn, to wash in the burn. Here’s thy comb. I must have the lassie up before the shepherd comes back, though ‘tis amost a pity to wake her! There, she is stirring! Best be off with thee, my bonnie lad.’
It was spoken more in the tone of nurse to nursling than of mother to son, still less that of mistress to farm boy; but Hal obeyed, only observing, ‘Take care of her.’
‘Ay, my pretty, will not I,’ murmured the old woman, as the child turned round on her pillow, put up a hand, rubbed her eyes, and disclosed a pair of sleepy brown orbs, gazed about, and demanded, ‘What’s this? Who’s this?’
‘’Tis Hob Hogward’s hut, my bonnie lamb, where you are full welcome! Here, take a sup of warm milk.’
‘I mind me now,’ said the girl, sitting up, and holding out her hands for the bowl. ‘They all left me, and the lad brought me—a great lubber lout—’
‘Nay, nay, mistress, you’ll scarce say so when you see him by day—a well-grown youth as can bear himself with any.’
‘Where is he?’ asked the girl, gazing round; ‘I want him to take me back. This place is not one for me. The Sisters will be seeking me! Oh, what a coil they must be in!’
‘We will have you back, my bairn, so soon as my goodman can go with you, but now I would have you up and dressed, ay, and washed, ere he and Hal come in. Then after meat and prayer you will be ready to go.’
‘To Greystone Priory,’ returned the girl. ‘Yea, I would have thee to know,’ she added, with a little dignity that sat drolly on her bare feet and disordered hair and cap as she rose out of bed, ‘that the Sisters are accountable for me. I am the Lady Anne St. John. My father is a lord in Bedfordshire, but he is gone to the wars in Burgundy, and bestowed me in a convent at York while he was abroad, but the Mother thought her house would be safer if I were away at the cell at Greystone when Queen Margaret and the Red Rose came north.’
‘And is that the way they keep you safe?’ asked the hostess, who meanwhile was attending to her in a way that, if the Lady Anne had known it, was like the tendance of her own nurse at home, instead of that of a rough peasant woman.