The jester held the instrument out at arm's length, saying, "It is strange, but even a lute can not remain disabled in the neighborhood of the good Saint Roch. Here are all the strings in a perfectly sound condition, and fairly quivering with anxiety to be played on."
A fib, like a murder, will "out" sooner or later, and realizing this fact, Antoine said nothing more, but striking a few chords began to sing, though in a quavering voice.
"See here, Antoine," said his friend, stopping him, "I have praised your voice and I am not going to have you sing like a frog that is choking to death in a pond. Open your mouth and let your words out instead of keeping them prisoners behind your teeth."
The boy was very angry at being thus derided, and his voice rang loud and flute-like in an old chanson of Burgundy, to which his audience listened with great pleasure, the innkeeper's wife remarking at its close that it was one she often had sung in her childhood.
"Let him sing some more songs of Burgundy," said the child in the window, speaking for the first time since she had made the remark about the hawk.
Antoine complied, and in the middle of the second song the company was surprised by the entrance of a large woman clad in a loose robe and a nightcap, who, without a word of apology, crossed the room to the window and waving her arms with their wide, flowing sleeves, which in this position gave her the appearance of a large bird that is about to fly, poured out a torrent of words in a strange language, then, swooping upon the little girl, swept her from the window and held her imprisoned in her wing-like arms.
She laid it on baby Mary's breast
The child replied in the same language and in a voice of indignation, but the woman was about to carry her from the room, when the little one struggled to the floor, and taking a piece of money from a small purse at her girdle, she crossed the floor and laid it on baby Mary's breast. Then turning with a brief "Good night" to the others, she followed her grotesque attendant from the room.