“What cometh after, where Reason prateth, I know not. I do never know.”
“Then I 'll not waste raisonable words upon thee,” laughed her father. “Come, tell me of thyself! Was 't a plenteous feast day, or a hungry one?”
“Not hungry,” she cried, with eyes alight. “There was one praised thee. 'T is not every day I taste honey.”
She waited, watching him, but he said nothing; he only leaned his chin upon his hand and looked out of the doorway.
“Thou wilt not ask a share o' my feast? Yet is it all thine,” she coaxed. “If any spake fair words of me, how should I pine to know!” She pressed his face betwixt her two hands and looked close, merrily, into his eyes. “But thou shalt hear, whether or no. Hearken! 'T was in Paul's churchyard where they played the Miracle, thy Miracle, the Harrowing o' Hell,—a yeoman made as he would kiss me,”—
Her father was attentive now; his eyes were sombre.
“I was fair sick with the touch of him. I cried out. And there was one standing by thrust off the yeoman.”
She lost herself, musing. Meanwhile, her father watched her, and presently, “Where is my little feast of praise?” he asked.
She started and took up the tale, but now her eyes were turned from his to the twilight space outside the door, and beyond that, and beyond.
“He was young,” she said,—“he was young; he wore a broidered coat; green it was, all daiseyed o'er with white and pink. He doffed his cap to me,—never no one afore did me that courtesy. He wore a trailing feather in his cap. 'If thou stand o' this side, out o' the press, still mayst thou see and hear,' saith he. And after, he saith 't was no common patcher, but a poet, wrote that Miracle. And I did tell him 't was my father. Then he would have my name as well, and, being told, he must needs recall how Nicolette, in that old tale, had a squire. He saith—he saith—'I would I were thy squire.'”