“'T is physician to the Black Prince. Must needs eat at king's table, forsooth!” And Dame Emma flounced her skirts in a huff and turned her indoors.
The shadows faded along with the sunshine. The little maid sat long in the deep window, agaze on the street. Gray were her eyes, dark-lashed, beneath straight brows, pencilled delicately. Slim and small she was, all eyes and golden hair,—the hair that flies out at a breath of wind like rays of light, and is naught of a burden though it fall as far as a maid's knees. A tress flew out of window now, like to a belated sunbeam. The smoke from the tavern turned to rose as it left the chimney mouth. The pink cloud wreathed upward and melted, and wreathed again.
“Oh, father, come and see the tavern-smoke! It groweth out o' chimney-pot like a flower. I mind me of the rose o' love in the Romaunt. 'T is of a pale colour.”
At the far end of the room, in a doorway, his head thrust outward to catch the light, there sat a man with a shaven crown, and thick reddish locks that waved thereabout. His eyes—the long, gray, shadow-filled eyes of Calote—were bent upon a parchment. He wrote, and as his hand moved, his lips moved likewise, in a kind of rhythm, as if he chaunted beneath his breath. A second roll of parchment, close-written, lay beside him on a three-legged stool, and ever and anon he turned to this and read,—then back to the copy,—or perchance he sat a short space with head uplifted and eyes fixed in a dream, his lips ever moving, but the busy hand arrested in mid-air. So sitting, he spoke not at once to his daughter; but, after a space, as one on a hill-top will answer him who questions from below, all unaware of the moments that have passed 'twixt question and reply, he said:—
“The rose of love is a red rose; neither doth it flower in a tavern.” And his voice was of a low, deep, singing sort.
“A red rose,” murmured Calote; “yea,—a red rose. The rose of love.”
Then Calote left the window and went down the dim room. Her feet were bare; they made no noise on the earthen floor.
“Twilight is speeding, father,” said she. “Thou hast writ since supper,—a long while that. Thou hast not spoke two words to thy Calote since afore Mass, and 't is a feast day. Us poor can't feast of victual,—tell me a tale. The tale o' the Rose, and how the lover hath y-kissed it, and that foul Jezebel hight Jealousy hath got Fair-Welcome prisoned in a tower,—a grim place,—the while Evil Tongue trumpeteth on the battlement.”
The dreamer rested his eyes on his daughter's face a tranquil moment, then drew her to his knee and smiled and stroked her hair.
“An thou knowest the Romaunt so well, wherefore shall I tell it thee?” he asked.