“Am I not free?” he asked, and spread his arms out east and west, as to gather in the moors.
“But all men are not so content as thou,” said the peddler. “They are ill-fed, they must work without stint. Wilt not thou join hand to help them that suffer?”
“Yea, brother,” Diggon answered him; “yea!” But then he knit his brows, and, “If all we go up to London to reason with nobilité, who 'll take care o' the sheep?”
The peddler sat silent, abashed; till on a sudden Diggon threw his head back and laughed, with “Who but the Good Shepherd!—Diggon 's a fool!”
So the days passed, and the peddler waited for Calote. She, meanwhile, was taken into favour at the manor-house. Old Sir Austin would chuck her under chin and follow her with his watery eyes in a way that she mistrusted. She wondered that the daughters observed naught; but they paid little heed to their father. The youngest loved him as a spoiled child will, for sake of gain; but the other two were peevish if he spoke to them.
Godiyeva he had thwarted in a marriage with a lord's son, with whom he was at feud, and she could not forget. In truth, he was so quarrelsome that his neighbours shunned his company; and he, on his part, cast gibes upon his daughters, for that they could not get them husbands.
“Is one comfort,” said Eleyne on a day when he had baited them till they wept for rage and shame. “Is one comfort; if no gentlemen will come anigh this house, will no gentlewoman neither. They be all afeared o' thee. If we must dwell here forlorn, we are spared a step-dame. Is none would live thy cat and dog life.”
“Sayst thou so? Sayst thou so, hussy?” roared the knight, and would have struck her; but his eye lighted on Calote,—he let drop his hand. “Sayst thou so?” he repeated more softly, and went out chuckling.
“Thou fool!” said Godiyeva to her sister. “What maggot hast thou put in 's head?”
'T was the day next after this one that Calote chose to tell them the tale of the Ploughman. She had been of three minds not to tell it at all; but then she called herself a coward. Of Richard she had never spoke, nor showed the horn, and she did not now. After supper she told her tale, and she said by way of a beginning:—