"Monition to-night, Master?"
"Even so, Dick. Come you both into the kitchen."
The two men nodded, and followed their master into a small but cheerful kitchen, where a large fire blazed in the wide chimney. In a wooden chair in the chimney corner, propped up by cushions, sat a silver-haired old woman, and a girl in the chimney corner at work, while an elder girl and a middle-aged woman were arranging forms as though some gathering of persons was expected.
"Time, Jack?" said the old woman.
"Aye so, Mother," returned he cheerily, setting to work with the forms.
He called her mother, for none other had he ever known: but the old woman was really the grandmother of the young man and the girls. The middle-aged woman was their one servant.
"There!" said Jack at length, glancing over the forms when the arrangement was finished. "Me reckoneth those shall be so many as we are like to have need."
"Who be a-coming, Jack?"
"No more than custom is, Mother—without Will Sterys bring yon friend of his that he spake of t'other night. Very like he may."
"Who shall he be?"