“And if I want none?”
“Oh!” said Alison, and laughed somewhat shrilly. “Have you got an elfin man for your true-love? You’ll not cheat me else with your ‘And if I want none?’”
Joan twirled her distaff. “I do not wish to cheat you.—And you went with the smocks to Madam Carthew’s?”
Alison bent, slipped off her shoe, and shook out of it a minute pebble. “And what do you mean by that?”
“Mean? I mean naught,” said Joan. “I meant that she was a great lady, and the squire’s house must be fine to see. What didst think I meant?”
But Alison would not divulge. All that came was, “I noted you last Sunday, how you looked aside, during the singing, at the gentry in the squire’s pew! But they are godly people, and if you think that they looked aside—”
“In God’s name!” said Joan, “what is the matter with the wench?”
But before she could find that out, here came one back—Mother Spuraway, to wit. She came hobbling up the green path to the gate, and stood beckoning. Joan rose and went to her. Mother Spuraway held in her hand a green herb taken up by the root with earth clinging to it.
“It is rue, dearie,” she said. “There was a clump of it left by the burned cot a little way off. So I dug it up for you—”