“Now, Ursula Felstede, I want these children.”
“Then you must ask leave from the Queen’s Commissioners, Mistress Wade. Eh, I couldn’t give ’em up if it were ever so! I daren’t, for the life o’ me!”
Mrs Wade begged, coaxed, lectured, and almost threatened her, but for once Ursula was firm. She dared not give up the children, and she was quite honest in saying so. Mrs Wade had to go home without them.
As she came up, very weary and unusually dispirited, to the archway of the King’s Head, she heard voices from within.
“I tell you she’s not!” said Dorothy Denny’s voice in a rather frightened tone; “she went forth nigh four hours agone, and whither I know not.”
“That’s an inquiry for me,” said Mrs Wade to herself, as she sprang down from her old black mare, and gave her a pat before dismissing her to the care of the ostler, who ran up to take her. “Good Jenny! good old lass!—Is there any company, Giles?” she asked of the ostler.
“Mistress, ’tis Master Maynard the Sheriff and he’s making inquiration for you. I would you could ha’ kept away a bit longer!”
“Dost thou so, good Giles? Well, I would as God would. The Sheriff had best have somebody else to deal with him than Doll and Bab.” And she went forward into the kitchen.
Barbara, her younger servant, who was only a girl, stood leaning against a dresser, looking very white and frightened, with the rolling-pin in her hand; she had evidently been stopped in the middle of making a pie. Dorothy stood on the hearth, fronting the terrible Sheriff, who was armed with a writ, and evidently did not mean to leave before he had seen the mistress.
“I am here, Mr Maynard, if you want me,” said Mrs Wade, quite calmly.