"And a good warning, too," said the other. "You will soon have somebody to speak to, and then pray speak to the purpose."
"Ah! Madge she was a merry maid,
A merry maid, with a round black eye;
And everything Jobson to her said,
The saucy jade she ask'd him, 'Why?'
"'I'll deck thee out in kirtles fine,
If you'll be mine,' he said, one day;
'I'll give you gold, if you'll be mine.'
But 'Why?' was all the maid would say.
"'I love you well, indeed I do,'
The youth he answered, with a sigh;
'To you I ever will be true.'
The saucy girl still ask'd him, 'Why!'
"But one day, near the church, he said,
'The ring is here--the priest is nigh,
Come, let us in, Madge, and be wed;'
But then she no more ask'd him, 'Why?'"
So sung the miller, with an easy, careless, saucy air, leaning his back against the turf wall of the hut, and twirling his staff round between his finger and thumb, as if prepared to tell the clock upon the head of any one who approached too near.
There was no time for any farther questions, however: for he had scarcely finished the last stave, when the forester whom they had first met appeared from behind the hut, with a brow that looked not quite so free and gay as when the travellers had last seen him. "Come--come, master miller," he said, "you should have to do with corn. Get some oats for these good men's horses, for they must speed back again as fast as they came."
"They will find oats enough in the hut, Robin," replied the other; "but I will do your bidding however, though I be a refractory cur."
Almost at the same moment that the above reply was made, the young franklin was speaking likewise.
"Go back again faster than we came?" he said. "I shall not feel disposed to do that, unless----"