"What is it! What's thy news! Speak quick or I'll sprinkle thee rather than the linen!" and raising the wooden dipper Priscilla whirled it so rapidly round her head that not a drop was spilled, while Mary shrieking and laughing darted back and crouched behind an alder bush.
"Maids! Maids! Whence this unseemly mirth! Know ye not that the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under the pot, a sure sign of the fire they are hasting to? The devil goeth about like a roaring lion"—
"Sometimes methinks he seemeth more like an ass," murmured Priscilla in Mary's ear, setting her off into convulsions of repressed laughter, while her naughty tormentor looked demurely up the bank to the angular figure defined against the evening sky and said,—
"We are beholden to you for the admonition, Master Allerton, and it must be a marvelous comfort to you that Mary and Remember Allerton weep so much oftener than they laugh."
"I would, thou froward wench, that I had the training of thee for a while. Mayhap thou wouldst find cause for weeping"—
"Nay, I'm sure on 't. The very thought well-nigh makes me weep now," retorted Priscilla blithely, as the sour-visaged Councilor went on his way, and Mary half frightened, half delighted, came forward saying,—
"Oh Priscilla, how dost thou dare flout Master Allerton in that style! He'll have thee before the Church."
"Not he!" replied Priscilla coolly. "Hist now, poppet, and I'll tell thee something—thou 'lt not repeat it though?"
"Not I," replied Mary stoutly.
"Well, then, dost think I should make a fitting stepdame for Bartholomew and Mary and Remember?"