"Spare me your threats, Nanette," he replied, coldly. "Had you intended to set them on me, you would have done it long ere this."
The woman hesitated. His calm, almost contemptuous, confidence was not without its effect upon her. Had he trembled, she would have spoken, but before his disdain, and the gay splendor of his attire, conspicuous amid rags from rubbish heaps, she felt a sudden consciousness of her own unclean environment; at the same time unusual warnings in her conjurations recurred to her. Something about him—was it dignity or pride or a nameless fear she herself experienced but could not understand?—beat down her eyes and she turned them doggedly away.
Abruptly she moved to the fire and again began to stir the mess, while the suppressed excitement in the room at once subsided. A minstrel lightly touched his battered dulcimer; a poet hummed a song in the dialect of thieves; a juggler began practising some deft work for hand and eye, and he of the hare lip sank quietly into a corner and patiently watched the simmering pot. The dwarf, with some misgiving, as a dog that is beaten crawls cautiously out of its kennel, crept from beneath the table.
"Oh, mistress," he whimpered, "some of it has boiled over!"
"Boiled over!" echoed the morio, mournfully.
At the same time the woman grasped the handle of the heavy kettle, lifted it from the jack, displaying in her bared arms the muscles of a man, and, staggering beneath the load, bore it steaming to the table. Amid the subsequent confusion, the gipsy held aloof from the demolition of the rabbit, and, seating herself at the foot of the table, began moodily once more to turn the cards.
A merry droll acted as host and dipped freely for all with the long spoon, commenting the while he dispensed the mess according to the wants of the miscellaneous gathering: "Pot-luck! 'Tis luck, and they're no field mice in it! There's everything else!" or "A bit of rabbit, my masters! I'll warrant he'll hop down your throats as fast as e'er he jumped a hillock." And, when one ate too greedily, slap went a spoonful of gravy o'er him with: "I thought you would catch it, knave!"
"Are they not blithe devils 'round the caldron?" muttered the woman. "There it is again!"—Bending over the bits of pasteboard on the table. "The duke here! And the fool on horseback! What do the cards mean?"
"That I must have the horse, Nanette," said the duke's jester, standing motionless and firm before the fireplace.
"Are you the fool?" she asked, more to herself than him. "Why does he wish to ride away?"