"Eh, lo' you now!" exclaimed the woman, resting a dirty hand against the stone wall. "Is't so fine as that, trow? Well, Master Porter, or Sir Porter, or my Lord Porter, as it shall like your Bigness, I would see Sir Lawrence Madison, if it should like you demean you to go and tell him so much, and him to come hither and behold his sister."
"His what?" inquired the porter in an indescribable tone, reviewing the querist in a style which was scarcely flattering.
"His sister," coolly returned the unabashed young woman. "His father's daughter, and his mother's belike, byname Emmot, and wife unto Will Sumpterman, that keepeth my Lord Le Despenser his baggage mules, and hath trapesed many a weary mile to speak with my said worshipful knight. Canst carry so much, thinkest?"
The disgusted porter turned away without deigning a reply; but his wife, who had overheard the colloquy, came forward and in politic wise invited Emmot to enter the lodge. There Lawrence found her when the porter returned with him. His first idea had been one of great pleasure. But when he saw the dirty, untidy, miserable-looking creature who called him Brother, a mixed feeling of compassion and disgust took its place.
To him she was another woman, and was very far from braving him as she had done the porter.
"Give you good den, Sir Lawrence," said she, louting low: "Metrusteth you shall not have forgat your sister Emmot, that is your own flesh and blood, and right ill off, with eight childre that have scarce a rag to their backs, nor an handful of meal to put in their mouths, I do ensure you. We have heard you be come back a knight, worshipful Sir, with a fortune in broad gold pieces, and sure you would never forget your own flesh and blood. Mariot hath but five childre, and her man was better off than mine; and Joan hath but two. So you shall see, sweet Sir, I cast no doubt, that 'tis I have the most need of your bountifulness, good Sir Lawrence."
Lawrence's awakened pity was rapidly passing into unspeakable disgust. He had come home prepared to divide his savings among these relatives, as being his own flesh and blood: but he was not prepared to find them throwing themselves upon him like a pack of wolves, intent upon nothing but the horrible emulation which of them could bite the largest piece out of him, and each utterly unconcerned whether the rest got any thing at all. It cost him something to say "Sister" to this wretched creature—not because she was poor,—Lawrence would never have felt that—but because she was vulgar and slovenly, disgusting alike in mind and body. He controlled himself, however, and passing by the too evident spirit of her speech, asked what she could tell him of the other members of the family. Emmot's communicativeness cooled manifestly. She professed that she knew nothing of the others, and Lawrence had to remind her what she had just said. After a little fencing she admitted that she knew where nearly all of them were. Mariot was living about two miles from Usk, and her husband had been a miner; he was dead, and she made a living by plaiting straw. One of her sons was quite old enough to work—a fact on which Emmot laid great stress; her husband had been a freeman, and none of the family were serfs except herself, which was an enormous advantage: and Joan's husband was a serf, so that she and her family were kept at their master's cost, and needed nothing whatever,—another enormous advantage; and she had only two children. And once more the eight children of the illogical Emmot were paraded rhetorically before Lawrence.
He gave her a handsome donation, over which she grumbled sorely, and he turned away sick at heart.
Lawrence's next work was to visit his father, who lived a day's journey away, with his son Simon and his family. Nicholas showed some interest in his youngest son, and some slight affection for him; and he did not ask for money—an omission fully made up by Simon's wife. Simon himself proved the least changed of any of the family. Grim and surly as far back as Lawrence could recollect him, he was grim and surly still. Lawrence left another donation here, and coming back, went a little out of his way to call upon his sister Joan.
If this lady had fewer children than her sister, she supplied the gap by a larger quantity of grumbling. When he left her—having had hard work to get away—Lawrence really wondered if she could have been more abusive had he refused her a penny. It was with a sensation of utter disgust with the whole concern that he went to pay his last visit, to his sister Mariot.