Martin: You have spoken the most beautiful of all truths. Does the grass grow high enough by the swing for you to pluck me two blades?
Jennifer: I think so. Yes. What do you want with them?
Martin: I want but one of them now. You shall only give me the other if, at the end of my tale, you agree that its lovers are as green as this blade and that.)
On the day (resumed Martin) when Helen began her lonely listening of heart and ears betwixt the seashell and the millstones of her dreams, there was not, dear Mistress Jennifer, a silver thread in her black locks to vex you with. For a girl of seventeen is but a child. Yet old enough to begin spinning the stuff of the spirit...
"My boy!—
"Oh, how strange it was, your coming like that, so suddenly. Before I opened the door I stood there guessing...And how could I have guessed this? Did you guess too on the other side?"
"No, not much. I thought it might be a cross old woman. What did YOU guess?"
"Oh, such stupid things. Kings and knights and even women. And it was you!"
"And it was you!"
"Suppose I'd been a cross old woman?"