"I would give the world if I had it to know what my cousin William is doing," said she in a musing fit, as though some sudden fancy had crossed her.
"And why may you not?" said the ready-witted maid; "yea, as sure as St Peter's at Rome, and that's not to be gainsaid either by Turk or infidel."
"What, dost thou learn these crotchets in thy creed?" said Ellen.
"Nay," replied the other, "it is a bit of conjuration not enjoined by the Church; a kind of left-handed intercourse which we get by stealth from other guess-folk, I reckon, than the holy saints."
"Am I to dream of this too?"
"Why, nay; you may be wide awake for that matter; but you must just take a phœnix feather in one hand, a cockatrice tooth in your mouth, and breathe on the glass, when, as the breath departs, they say your true love will appear therein."
"But he is not my true love, wench; and so I may not bind him with such spell, mayhap."
"How know ye that, fair mistress?"
"Go to; thou dost wound and vex me with thy questions. Hath he not been gone these five months, and never a word, good or bad, hath been rendered to me? Nay, did he not, ere he went, so deport himself with most cold and supercilious arrogance, and even with neglect and disdain?"
"Because in your own bright self, lady, he had the first example; for of all the gay sparks that fluttered about you there was never a one o' them that had to endure such chilling looks and so haughty a bearing as were usually reserved for him."