Scene 2. Meanwhile the Richmond fair was at its height. From a large parchment the pompous Sheriff had read the law by which all contracts for service made at the fair were binding for at least one year as soon as money had passed. Among those who had come to bid were a sturdy young farmer, Plunkett, and his foster-brother Lionel. The latter evidently was of a gentler birth, but his parentage was shrouded in mystery. As a child he had been left with Plunkett's mother by a fugitive, an aged man who, dying from exposure and exhaustion, had confided the boy to her care, first, however, handing her a ring with the injunction that if misfortune ever threatened the boy, to show the ring to the queen.
One after another the girls proclaimed their deftness at cooking, sewing, gardening, poultry tending, and other domestic and rural accomplishments, the Sheriff crying out, "Four guineas! Who'll have her?—Five guineas! Who'll try her?" Many of them cast eyes at the two handsome young farmers, hoping to be engaged by them. But they seemed more critical than the rest.
Just then they heard a young woman's voice behind them call out, "No, I won't go with you!" and, turning, they saw two sprightly young women arguing with a testy looking old man who seemed to have a ridiculous idea of his own importance. Lionel and Plunkett nudged each other. Never had they seen such attractive looking girls. And when they heard one of them call out again to the old man, "No, we won't go with you!"—for Sir Tristan was urging the Lady Harriet and Nancy to leave the fair—the young men hurried over to the group.
"Can't you hear her say she won't go with you?" asked Lionel, while Plunkett called out to the girls near the Sheriff's stand, "Here, girls, is a bidder with lots of money!" A moment later the absurd old man was the centre of a rioting, shouting crowd of girls, who followed him when he tried to retreat, so that finally "Martha" and "Julia" were left quite alone with the two men. The young women were in high spirits. They had sallied forth in quest of adventure and here it was. Lionel and Plunkett, on the other hand, suddenly had become very shy. There was in the demeanour of these girls something quite different from what they had been accustomed to in other serving maids. Somehow they had an "air," and it made the young men bashful. Plunkett tried to push Lionel forward, but the latter hung back.
"Watch me then," said Plunkett. He advanced as if to speak to the young women, but came to a halt and stood there covered with confusion. It chanced that Lady Harriet and Nancy had been watching these men with quite as much interest as they had been watched by them. Lionel, who bore himself with innate grace and refinement under his peasant garb, had immediately attracted "Martha," while the sturdier Plunkett had caught "Julia's" eye, and they were glad when, after a few slyly reassuring glances from them, Plunkett overcame his hesitancy and spoke up:
"You're our choice, girls! We'll pay fifty crowns a year for wages, with half a pint of ale on Sundays and plum pudding on New Year's thrown in for extras."
"Done!" cried the girls, who thought it all a great lark, and a moment later the Lady Harriet had placed her hand in Lionel's and Nancy hers in Plunkett's and money had passed to bind the bargain.
And now, thinking the adventure had gone far enough and that it was time for them to be returning to court, they cast about them for Sir Tristan. He, seeing them talking on apparently intimate terms with two farmers, was scandalized and, having succeeded in standing off the crowd by scattering money about him, he called out brusquely, "Come away!"
"Come away?" repeated Plunkett after him. "Come away? Didn't these girls let you know plainly enough a short time ago that they wouldn't hire out to you?"
"But I rather think," interposed "Martha," who was becoming slightly alarmed, "that it is time for 'Julia' and myself to go."