“Do you?” said the child, with a glad light in her eyes as she opened a tiny satchel hanging on her plump arm, and taking from it a splendid prancing horse with a king crowned riding on his back, all made of gilt gingerbread. “I’s so glad—here’s a man on horseback from Banbury Fair—can you eat him too?”
“Are oo a blackamoor?” she asked, shrinking back a step as she saw his face.
“Truly yes, and thank you, little maid,” laughed her new friend, taking the gingerbread from her tiny fingers. “Why, ’tis the King! Long life to his Majesty!” he added, as he bit the man’s head off, and seemed to enjoy it heartily. “What is your name, dear?” he went on, with his mouth full.
“What is oors?” said she, with a roguish twirl of her ripe red lips.
“Charles.”
“Ah, mine’s Molly—Molly Speedwell.”
“And whose little girl are you?”
“I’m the miller’s daughter of Oakside, and there’s my home,” she went on, pointing through the trees, and Charles discerned a red-roofed, white walled cottage standing in a garden. Hard by, upon a high turfy mound, was a mill, whose sails were whirling fast in the morning breeze. “And there’s the mill.”