"Assuredly it was. Trying to set you against me, the spiteful old make-bate, and no one knows how long she will be here, falling on the poor lads if they do but sing a song in the hall after supper, as if she were a very Muggletonian herself. I trow she is no better."
"Did you not tell me how she held out her house against the Roundheads, and went to prison for sheltering Cavaliers?"
"I only wish they had kept her there. All old women be Puritans at heart. I say Stead, I'll have done with service. Let us be wed at once."
Stead could hardly breathe at this proposition. "But I have only nine pounds and two crowns and—" he began.
"No matter, there be other ways," she went on. "Get the house built, and I'll come, and we will have curds and whey all the summer, and mistress and all her friends will come out and drink it, and eat strawberries!"
"But the Squire will never build the place up unless I bring more in hand."
"You 'but' enough to butt down a wall, you dull-pated old Stead," said Emlyn, "you know where to get at more, and so do I."
Stead's grey eyes fixed on her in astonishment and bewilderment.
"Numskull!" she exclaimed, but still in that good humoured voice of banter that he never had withstood, "you know what I mean, though maybe you would not have me say it in the street, you that have secrets."
"How do you know of it?"