“And yet I wis not,” added Maude, thinking aloud. “Where the streets be gold, and the gates margarites, what shall the gowns be?”
“Pure, bright stones (see Note 3), little maid,” said the lady. “But there be no ’prentices yonder.”
“What! be they all masters?” said the child.
“‘A kingdom and priests,’” she said. “But there be no ’prentices, seeing there is no work, save the King’s work.”
Little Maude wondered privately whether that were to sew stars upon sunbeams.
“But there shall not enter any defouled thing into that City,” pursued the lady seriously; “no leasing, neither no manner of wrongfulness.”
Little Maude’s face fell considerably.
“Then I could not go to cleanse the pans yonder!” she said sorrowfully. “I did tell a lie once to Mistress Drew.”
“Who is Mistress Drew?” enquired the lady.
The child looked up in astonishment, wondering how it came to pass that any one living in Langley Palace should not know her who, to Maude’s apprehension, was monarch of all she surveyed—inside the kitchen.