This assertion would not sound strange to us, but it was astounding to Maude.
“Would you ipocras and spice rather?”
“I never eat spice.”
“Will you eat a marchpane?”
“I never eat marchpane.”
Maude wondered what this impracticable being did condescend to do.
“Then a shive of bread and tryacle?”
“Bread, an’ you will: I am no babe, that I should lack sugar and tryacle.”
Maude procured refreshments, and the elder nun, first making the sign of the cross over her dry bread, began to eat; while Lady Isabel, who evidently had not reached an equal height of monastic sanctity, did not refuse any of the good things offered. But when Maude attempted further conversation, the ascetic and acetic lady, intimating that it was prayer-time, and she could talk no more, pulled forth a huge rosary of wooden beads, from which the paint was nearly worn away, and began muttering Ave Marys in apparently interminable succession. “Now, Isabel,” said Constance, “prithee do me to wit of divers matters I would fain know. Mind thou, I have been shut up from all manner of tidings, good or ill, sithence this last March, and I have a sumpter-mule’s load of questions to ask at thee. But, first of all, how earnest thou hither?”
“Maybe thou shalt find so much in the answers to thy questions,” replied Isabel—a smile parting her lips which had in it more keenness than mirth.