“What is that? I will do it no hurt.”
Maude looked up again, and felt as if she could trust that face with any thing. So merely saying—“You will not give it Parnel, Mistress?” she drew forth her treasure and put it into the lady’s hand.
“I will give it to none saving thine own self. Dost know what it is, little maid?”
“No, Mistress, in good sooth.”
“How earnest by it? ’Tis a part of a book.”
“My mother, that is dead, charged me to keep it; for it was all she had for to give me. I know not, in very deed, whether it be Charlemagne or Arthur”—the only two books of which poor Maude had ever heard. “But an’ I could meet with one that wist to read, and that were my true friend, I would fain cause her to tell me what I would know thereabout.”
“And hast no true friend?” inquired the lady.
“Not one,” said Maude sorrowfully.
“Well, little maid, I can read, and I would be thy true friend. What is it thou wouldst fain know?”
“Why,” said Maude, in an interested tone, “whether the great knight, of whose mighty deeds this book doth tell, should win his ’trothed love at the last, or no.”