“Oh, some of those old Scripture matters? I wis nought o’ those folks. But what so? I have not slain my brother, nor my sister neither.”
“It looks as though your brother and your sister too might go astray and be lost ere you should soil your fingers and strain your arms a-pulling them forth.”
“Gramercy! Every man for himself!” saith Dame Elizabeth, a-pulling off her hood. “Now, here’s a string come off! Alway my luck! If a body might but bide in peace—”
“And never have no troubles, nor strings come off, nor buttons broke, nor stitches come loose—” adds Dame Joan, a-laughing.
“Right so—man might have a bit of piece of man’s life, then. Why, look you, the string is all chafen, that it is not worth setting on anew; and so much as a yard of red ribbon have I not. I must needs don my hood of green of Louvaine.”
She said it in a voice which might have gone with the direst calamity that could befall.
“Dame Elizabeth de Mohun, you be a full happy woman!”
“What will the woman say next?”
“That somewhat hangeth on what you may next say.”
“Well, what I next say is that I am full ill-used to have in one hour a tarnished fillet and a broken string, and—Saint Lucy love us! here be two of my buttons gone!”