"If she do not," groaned Gillman, "I know not what will happen to the farmstead. For it is six months now since I tasted water, and how can a man follow his business who is fuddled day and night with Barley Wine? Life is full of hardships, of which daughters are the greatest. Gillian!" he cried, "when will ye come into your senses and out of the Well-House?"
But Gillian took no more heed of him than of the quacking of the drake on the duckpond.
"Well, here is your bread," said Gillman, and he thrust a basket with seven loaves in it through the gap. "And may to-morrow bring better tidings."
"One moment, dear master," entreated little Joan. "Tell me, please, how Nancy my Jersey fares."
"Pines for you, pines for you, maid, though Charles does his best by her. But it is as though she had taken a vow to let down no milk till you come again. Rack and ruin, rack and ruin!"
And the old man retreated as he had come, muttering "Rack and ruin!" the length of the hedge.
The maids then set about preparing breakfast, which was simplicity itself, being bread and apples than which no breakfast could be sweeter. There was a loaf for each maid and one over for Gillian, which they set upon the wall of the Well-House, taking away yesterday's loaf untouched and stale.
"Does she never eat?" asked Martin.
"She has scarcely broken bread in six months," said Joscelyn, "and what she lives on besides her thoughts we do not know."
"Thoughts are a fast or a feast according to their nature," said Martin, "so let us feed the ducks, who have none."