“Ay, so he will!” said Margaret, suddenly making up as much mind as she had. “I thank you Mistress Clere. I’ll have the green, Master Clere, an’ it please you.”
Now, Alice Mount had offered a reason for choosing the brown dress, and Mrs Clere had only drawn a picture; but Margaret was the sort of woman to be influenced by a picture much more than by a solid reason. So the green linsey was cut off and rolled up—not in paper: that was much too precious to be wasted on parcels of common things. It was only tied with string, and each woman taking her own package, the two friends were about to leave the shop, when it occurred to Mrs Mount to ask a question.
“So you’ve got Bessy Foulkes at last, Mistress Clere?”
“Ay, we have, Alice,” was the answer. “And you might have said, ‘at long last,’ trow. Never saw a maid so hard to come by. I could have got twenty as good maids as she to hire themselves, while Bess was thinking on it.”
“She should be worth somewhat, now you have her, if she took such work to come by,” observed Margaret Thurston.
“Oh, well, she’ll do middling. She’s a stirring maid over her work: but she’s mortal quiet, she is. Not a word can you get out of her without ’tis needed. And for a young maid of nineteen, you know, that’s strange fashions.”
“Humph!” said Master Nicholas, rolling up some woollen handkerchiefs. “The world ’d do with another or twain of that fashion.”
“Now, Nicholas, you can’t say you get too much talk!” exclaimed his wife turning round. “Why Amy and me, we’re as quiet as a couple of mice from morning till night. Aren’t we now?”
“Can’t I?” said Nicholas, depositing the handkerchiefs on a shelf.
“Well, any way, you’ve got no call to it. Nobody can say I talk too much, that I know: nor yet Amy.”