“With our Lady and the Blessed Babe—I know not, I know not, I would liefer have it in thy hands.”
“I hold to my own.”
“Father, father,” cried Joan, running in, “mother bids me ask whether thou hast told Nicholas Harding to come and help her with the tables? And she saith Hal will drive her demented unless thou find some errand for him to do.”
Such a feast as Prothasy had prepared! And to it came John Hamlyn, his wife, and daughter, and Wat, contriving to sit next to Mistress Margaret, was able to tell her the whole tale, which seemed to her most marvellously interesting. Also she questioned him much about his own corbel, and was amazed to think that it should have been a neighbour’s dog which he had set up, and would fain see for herself the unconscious Spot who had been thus immortalised. And afterwards she spoke very prettily to Wat’s mother, who had come in from her farm, a proud woman to think what her son had done, and gazing at him as if no mother had ever another such.
But the happiest perhaps was Joan. With Agrippa in her arms, she sat next to Hugh, and could whisper to him from time to time, and listen to what was said, and rejoice with all her faithful little heart. Never apprentice had won such honour, and never, said Elyas strongly to John Hamlyn, could one deserve it better. And in the midst of the feast came a messenger bringing Hugh a gift from the bishop, a reliquary of goodly workmanship.
Such a day, as Joan said that evening with a sigh of happiness, had never been before!