But Peter answered her: “We also must eat, mistress. I am in arrears to Bailiff for that my plough broke in the furrow three days past; I could not beg no wood to mend it, but Forester found me in the park with mine axe. Wherefore I sat yesterday in the stocks.”
Peter had no shoes, and there were raw rings about his ankles where the stocks had galled him, also his neck was bruised. He was very ragged, his tabard full of holes. Nevertheless, he was not the only one in that village went bare.
So soon as all the people heard that this was Long Will's daughter, who was Peter's friend in London, they came eagerly to see her. They were a big and kindly and simple folk, slow and obstinate. They heard Calote's tales in silence, stolidly; yet they came again and again to hear. Now it was before the door of Peter's cot that they gathered; now it was at the foot of the cliffs when the tide was out; now it was in the churchyard of a Sunday after Mass, the parson sitting by a-copying her words; for his own book of the Vision was a tattered thing, never complete, that he had bought at a Devon fair.
Meanwhile, the parson and the peddler were close comrades. The peddler had to answer many questions; as, how did John Wyclif appear? And was he so learned a man as John Ball? And did William Courtney, Devon's son, still bear him arrogant, now he was Bishop of London? And was it true, what the friars in these parts said, that John Wyclif was a sorcerer and in the Devil's pay? And had the peddler been in Oxford?—this with a lingering sigh. But ever the questioning came round at the last to love, for concerning this matter the parson was very curious; not that love Long Will sang in the Vision, but the more common kind; and throughout whole days of June, as they walked together over the wide rose-blossoming country on the top of the cliffs, the parson to carry comfort to the sick or the aged, the peddler to sell his wares, they discoursed of lovers and loving; and it was the peddler who learned the parson the Romaunt of the Rose.
“And didst thou ever suffer this malady of love, to know it?” the parson queried one day.
“Ay, a-and do suffer,” the peddler answered. “B-b-but she 'll n-none of me.”
“A foolish maid, to judge by the outside,” said the parson; himself was a big, broad, yellow-headed man, might have had any maid in Devon to keep his house for him an he had chose; but of this he was not aware.
“Didst ever essay to curl thy hair?” he continued; “'t would soften thy countenance.”
The peddler smiled as at a memory: “Yea,” he said, “I 've d-done so full oft.”
They were journeying along the edge of the cliff, and the sun was low; on the sea there was one little ship.