Audrey coolly set down the iron on its stand, folded up the shirt which she had just finished, and laid another on the board.
“You can, wait uncommon well, John Wastborowe,” said she; “you’ve had as much as is good for you already, and maybe a bit to spare. I can’t leave my ironing.”
“Am I to get it myself, then?” asked the gaoler, sulkily.
“Just as you please,” was the calm response. “I’m not going.”
Wastborowe took up his jug, went to the cellar, and drew the ale for himself, in a meek, subdued style, very different indeed from the aspect which he wore to his prisoners. He had scarcely left the door when a shrill voice summoned him to—
“Come back and shut the door, thou blundering dizzard! When will men ever have a bit of sense?”
The gaoler came back to shut the door, and then, returning to the dungeon, showed himself so excessively surly and overbearing, that his men whispered to one another that “he’d been having it out with his mistress.” Before he recovered his equanimity, the Bailiff returned and called him into the courtyard.
“Hearken, Wastborowe: how many of these have you now in ward? Well-nigh all, methinks.” And he read over the list. “Elizabeth Wood, Christian Hare, Rose Fletcher, Joan Kent, Agnes Stanley, Margaret Simson, Robert Purcas, Agnes Silverside, John Johnson, Elizabeth Foulkes.”
“Got ’em all save that last,” said Wastborowe, “Who is she? I know not the name. By the same token, what didst with the babe? There were three of Johnson’s children, and one in arms.”
“Left it wi’ Jane Hiltoft,” said the gaoler, gruffly. “I didn’t want it screeching here.”