'Wasting your time over the brat and leaving the Tavern to go to rack and ruin'—Moll would say, with a sneer, as she passed them. But she never interfered; for the husband who had courted her when she was a young girl was the only person for whom she still kept a soft spot in the heart that of late years seemed to have grown so hard.
Truth to tell, tavern-keeping was no easy business in those unsettled times, and Moll had ever been a famous body for worrying over trifles.
'"The worry cow
Would have lived till now,
If she had not lost her breath,
But she thought her hay
Would not last the day,
So she mooed herself to death."
'And all the time she had three sacks full! Remember that, Moll, my lass!' Jan's father would say to his wife, when she began to pour out to him her dismal forebodings about the future.
But since this easy-going, jolly daddy had left the Inn and had gone away with the other men and lads of the village to fight with My Lord for the King, little Jan's lot was a hard one, and seemed likely to grow harder day by day.
Rough Moll's own life was not too easy either, at this time, though few folks troubled themselves to speculate upon the reason for her added gruffness. So she concealed her anxieties under an extra harshness of tongue and did her best to make life a burden to everyone she came across. For, naturally, now that the Inn was no longer a pleasant place in mine host's absence, it was no longer a profitable place either. Custom was falling off and quarter day was fast approaching. Moll was at her wits' end to know where she should find money to pay her rent, when, one day, to her unspeakable relief, My Lady in her coach stopped at the door of the Inn. Now Moll had been dairymaid up at the Hall years ago, before her marriage, and My Lady knew of old that Moll's butter was as sweet as her looks were sour. Perhaps she guessed, also, at some of the other woman's anxieties; for was not her own husband, My Lord, away at the wars too? Anyway, when the fine yellow coach stopped at the door of the Inn, it was My Lady's own head with the golden ringlets that leaned out of the window, and My Lady's own soft voice that asked if her old dairymaid could possibly oblige her with no less than thirty pounds of butter for her Yuletide feast to the villagers the following week.
The Moll who came out, smiling and flattered, to the Inn door and stood there curtseying very low to her Ladyship, was a different being from the Rough Moll of every day. She promised, with her very smoothest tongue, she would not fail. She knew where to get the milk, and her Ladyship should have the butter, full weight and the very best, by the following evening, which would leave two full days before Christmas.
'That is settled then, for I have never known you to fail me,' said My Lady, as the coach drove away, leaving Moll curtseying behind her, and vowing again that 'let come what would come,' she would not fail.
It was small wonder, therefore, after this unaccustomed graciousness, that she was shorter-tempered than ever with her unfortunate guests that evening. Was not their presence hindering her from getting on with her task? At length she left the lasses to serve the ale, which, truth to tell, they were nothing loath to do, while Moll herself, in her wooden shoes and with her skirts tucked up all round her, clattered in and out of the dairy where already a goodly row of large basins stood full to the brim with rich yellow milk on which, even now, the cream was fast rising.
Thirty pounds of butter could never all be made in one day; she must begin her task overnight. True, little Jan was whining to go to bed as he tried vainly to keep awake on his small hard stool by the fire. The brat must wait; she could not attend to him now. He could sleep well enough leaning against the bricks of the chimney-corner. Or, no! the butter-making would take a long time, and Moll was never a methodical woman. Jan should lie down, just as he was, and have a nap in the kitchen until she was ready to attend to him. Roughly, but not unkindly, she pulled him off the stool and laid him down on a rug in a dark corner of the kitchen and told him to be off to sleep as fast as he could, stooping to cover him with an old coat of her husband's that was hanging on the door, as she spoke. Nothing loath, Jan shut his sleepy eyes, and, burying his little nose in the folds of the old coat, he went happily off into dreamland, soothed by the well-remembered out-door smell that always clung around his father's belongings.