“The Lord bless you!”
“Child, you’re the first that has blessed me these forty years! and I never hear that name. Folks take me for one of Sathanas’ servants, and they never speak to me of—that Other. I reckon they fancy I should mount the broomstick and fly through the chimney, if they did. Eh me!—and time was I was a comely young maid—as young and well-favoured as you, my dear: eh dear, dear, to think how long it is since! I would I could pull you a bit nearer the fire; but I’ve spent all my strength—and that’s nought much—in hauling of you in. But you’re safe, at any rate; and I’ll cover you up with straw—I’ve got plenty of that, if I have not much else. Them villains, to use a young maid so!—or a wife, whichever you be. And they say I’m in league with the Devil! I never got so near him as they be.”
“I am a maid.”
“Well, and that’s the best thing you can be. Don’t you be in a hurry to change it. Come, now, I’ll set on that sup o’ broth was given me at the green house; you’ll be ready to drink it by it’s hot. Well, now, it’s like old times and pleasant, having a bit o’ company to speak to beside Gib here. What’s your name, now, I wonder?”
“Ermine.”
“Ay, ay. Well, mine’s Haldane—old Haldane, the Wise Woman—I’m known all over Oxfordshire, and Berkshire too. Miles and miles they come to consult me. Oh, don’t look alarmed, my pretty bird! you sha’n’t see one of them if you don’t like. There’s a sliding screen behind here that I can draw, and do by times, when I want to fright folks into behaving themselves; I just draw it out, and speak from behind it, in a hollow voice, and don’t they go as white!—I’ll make a cosy straw bed for you behind it, and never a soul of ’em ’ll dare to look in on you—no, not the justice himself, trust me. I know ’em: Lords, and constables, and foresters, and officers—I can make every mother’s son of ’em shiver in his shoes, till you’d think he had the ague on him. But you sha’n’t, my dear: you’re as safe as if the angels was rocking you. Maybe they’ll want to come with you: but they’ll feel strange here. When you can talk a bit without hurting of you, you shall tell me how you got here.”
“I lost my way in the snow.”
“Well, no wonder! Was there many of you?”
“About thirty.”
“And all served like you?”