As the queenly little figure stood in the doorway, the servants nudged each other and the voices straightway subsided.
“Hush, she will be telling tales,” said one of the maids quietly.
“Nonsense,” said Elspeth, Audry’s old nurse, who was assisting, “surely you know the child better than that.”
For a moment or two Aline did not speak and a strange feeling of shame seemed to pervade the place.
“Elspeth,” said Aline, while the flicker of a smile betrayed her, “if you run about so, you’ll wear out your shoon; you should sit on the table and swing your feet like Joseph there.”
“Now, hinnie, why for are you making fun of an old body?”
“I would not make fun of you for anything,” said Aline; “but look at his shoon; are they not fine,—and his beautiful lily-white hands?”
“Look as if you never did a day’s work, Joe,” said Silas, the reeve.
“Oh, no, he works with his brain, he’s thinking,” said Aline, putting her hand to her brow with mock gravity. “He’s reckoning up his fortune. How much is it, Joseph?”
“Methinks his fortune will all be reckonings,” said Silas, “for he’ll never get any other kind.”