It was Amphillis’s turn to be astonished.
“Dear heart!” she said. “Why, I have no kindred nearer than uncle and cousins, but I have ever reckoned it a sore trouble to lose my mother, and no blessing.”
“Very like it was to you!” said Agatha. “You’d make no bones if you were ruled like an antiphonarium (music-book for anthems and chants), I’ll be bound, I’m none so fond of being driven in harness. I love my own way, and I’ll have it, too, one of these days.”
“But then you have none to love you! That is one of the worst sorrows in the world, I take it.”
“Love! bless you, I shall have lovers enough! I’ve three hundred a year to my fortune.”
Three hundred pounds in 1372 was equal to nearly five thousand now.
“But what good should it do you that people wanted your money?” asked Amphillis. “That isn’t loving you.”
“Amphillis, I do believe you were born a hundred years old! or else in some other world, where their notions are quite diverse from this,” said Agatha, taking a candied orange from the sewer. “I never heard such things as you say.”
“But lovers who only want your money seem to me very unsatisfying folks,” replied Amphillis. “Will they smooth your pillows when you are sick? or comfort you when your heart is woeful?”
“I don’t mean my heart to be woeful, and as to pillows, there be thousands will smooth them for wages.”