"Lawn as white as driven snow;
Cypress black as e'er was crow;
Gloves as sweet as damask roses;
Masks for faces, and for noses;
Bugle-bracelets, necklace amber;
Perfume for a lady's chamber;
Golden quoifs and stomachers,
For my lads to give their dears;
Pins and poking-sticks of steel,
What maids lack from head to heel:
Come, buy of me, come; come, buy, come, buy;
Buy, lads, or else your lasses cry:
Come, buy."
For a moment after she had concluded she stood as if dumb, half-frightened, heart-sick, and then, bursting into tears, with a stifled little cry of despair, she rushed and fell all in a heap at the knees of Jean François. Forgetting all of us, he picked her up in his big, strong arms—she who was but a fragile child—and, smoothing the rumpled hair from her eyes, kissed her brow.
"Dear little jade," said he quite tenderly, "I didn't know that it made all of this difference."
"You won't go, Jean François?" she smiled through her tears.
"I must," said he regretfully. "I cannot help it.... But next June I'll come again. And every June that follows, as long as I shall live, the happy caravan shall be yours."
A few moments later, as we hurried into the open, I noticed that Nance was actually growing. It had never occurred to me that she would ever be any larger than the day she first thrust herself through my crack in the fence. As she passed with her grandfather, Jean François, and Mr. Appleblossom, she nodded to me quite as if she were an equal. In my humiliation I quite forgot to walk on my hands, a feat I was holding in reserve. Instead, off I skipped down to the river and "went-in" by myself. I felt that the world was very unappreciative and unsympathetic.