"Oh, maidens," answered Martin merrily, "every tune deserves its fee. But don't look so troubled—my hire shall be of the lightest. Let me see! You shall fetch me the flower from the hair of your little mistress who sits weeping on the coping with her face hidden in her shining locks."
At this the milkmaids clapped their hands, and little Joan, running to the Well-House, with a touch like thistledown drew from the weeper's yellow hair a yellow primrose. She brought it to the gate and laid it in Martin's hand.
"Now you will play for us, won't you?" said she. "A dance for a spring-morning when the leaves dance on the apple-trees."
Then Martin tuned his lute and played and sang as follows, while the girls took hands and danced in a green chain among the twisty trees.
The green leaf dances now,
The green leaf dances now,
The green leaf with its tilted wings
Dances on the bough,
And every rustling air
Says, I've caught you, caught you,
Leaf with tilted wings,
Caught you in a snare!
Whose snare? Spring's,
That bound you to the bough
Where you dance now,
Dance, but cannot fly,
For all your tilted wings
Pointing to the sky;
Where like martins you would dart
But for Spring's delicious art
That caught you to the bough,
Caught, yet left you free
To dance if not to fly—oh see!
As you are dancing now,
Dancing on the bough,
Dancing on the bough,
Dancing with your tilted wings
On the apple-bough.
Now as Martin sang and the milkmaids danced, it seemed that Gillian in her prison heard and saw nothing except the music and the movement of her sorrows. But presently she raised her hand and touched her hair-band, and then she lifted up the fairest face Martin had ever seen, so that he needs must see it nearer; and he took the green gate in one stride, and the green dancers never observed him. Then Gillian's tender mouth parted like an opening quince-blossom, and—
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" she said, "if you had only lived they would not have stolen the flower from my hair while I sat weeping."
Above her head a whispering voice made answer, "Oh, Daughter, Daughter, dry your sweet eyes. You shall wear this other flower when yours is gone over the duckpond to Adversane."
And lo! A second primrose dropped out of the skies into her lap. And that day the lovely Gillian wept no more.