FAUNCH.
What tune will ye have, Simon Scarlett?
SCARLETT.
Let it be a maypole dance, Faunch the fiddler! And a merry one! (Faunch begins to play.) Let's see you foot it! (The folk of Merrymount begin to dance.) Oh, bravely, bravely! If the Puritans could see you you'd be led to the stocks and the whipping-post!
LACKLEATHER
(darkly).
'Twill take less than a dance to lead us there! You know right well that the Puritans have sworn that if they catch us straying beyond the bounds of Merrymount 'twill be the stocks and the whipping-post, and that without mercy!
SCARLETT
(with a laugh and a shrug).
The stocks and the whipping-post! Come, drive such thoughts from your head! Look! Yonder comes Jock with a tankard of apple juice! Cups for us all! Quick, Lackleather! (Carved wooden cups are taken from the trunk of a hollow tree.) Come, where are we all?
TIB.
All here, save Sarah Scarlett, who bides with Goody Gleason, and Bess, who hath been away since dawn. Robin and Kit have gone to search for her.