"'Twill answer all ends if you give him that letter. He is in good health, I hope."
"Well, sir, he is and he isn't, as you may say," answers he, dropping into a familiar, confidential tone after casting his eye over me to be sure I was no great person. "He ails nothing, to be sure, for I hear he is ever afoot from morn till even a-searching hither and thither; but a more downhearted, rueful looking gentleman for his age I never see. 'Twixt you and me, sir, I think he hath lost his sweetheart, seeing I am charged, with Sir Peter's permission, to follow and not lose sight of any lady who may chance to call here for him."
I walked back to Greenwich across the fields, debating in my mind whether I should tell Moll of her husband's distress or not, so perplexed with conflicting arguments that I had come to no decision when I reached home.
Moll spying me coming, from her window in the front of the house, met me at the door, in her cloak and hood, and begged I would take her a little turn over the heath.
"What have you to tell me?" asks she, pressing my arm as we walked on.
"I have given your letter to Sir Peter Lely's servant, who promises to deliver it faithfully to your husband."
"Well," says she, after a little pause of silence, "that is not all."
"You will be glad to know that he is well in health," says I, and then I stop again, all hanging in a hedge for not knowing whether it were wiser to speak or hold my tongue.
"There is something else. I see it in your face. Hide nothing from me for love's sake," says she, piteously. Whereupon, my heart getting the better of my head (which, to be sure, was no great achievement), I told all as I have set it down here.
"My dear, dear love! my darling Dick!" says she, in the end. And then she would have it told all over again, with a thousand questions, to draw forth more; and these being exhausted, she asks why I would have concealed so much from her, and if I did fear she would seek him.