It was light when she awoke, though the sun had not yet risen; and, jumping up, she shook Colin, who directly he could be made to understand that the day had come, also leaped from his bed and began to struggle with the great bars of the kitchen-door. Just as he managed to undo them and to throw open the door to make quite certain that the morning was fine, his mother, Mistress Short, came clattering down the steps that led from the upper room right into the kitchen.
She wore all her best things. A gown of grey material was looped high over a girdle to show her red stockings and her buckled shoes. On her head there was a white cap, indented over the forehead, and rising into two wings on either side, while folds of linen were brought round her neck under her chin. Over her arm she carried the children’s holiday clothes, for this was a great occasion. The whole family was to spend the day at the house of her husband’s sister, Mistress Harpham, a rich glover’s wife in York, and Mistress Short was determined to make a good appearance.
Colin and Margery were soon dressed, and if no idea of much washing occurred to them, you must remember that they lived hundreds of years ago, when soap and water were not considered so necessary as they are now. They dipped their heads indeed, into a trough of water in the farmyard just outside, and rubbing their faces with a cloth, were ready to have the finishing-touches put to their clothes. In his long stockings and little brown tunic, Colin looked quite charming, and Margery was very proud of her green frock looped up over a girdle like her mother’s. Both children wore little capes of linen, to which a hood was attached, to be buttoned under the chin or left hanging, according to the state of the weather.
Their mother had prepared a meal of cakes and ale, but they were almost too excited to eat and drink, and it was not till their father, who had gone to fetch the horses, appeared, riding on Dobbin and leading Jock, that they could believe they were really going to start.
Margery was soon seated in front of her father on Dobbin’s broad saddle, and Colin rode with his mother on Jock, the other farm-horse; and so, long before the sun rose, they ambled out of the yard into a lane which led to the high road to York.
The sky was clear, the larks were singing, and the wild roses in the hedges were all wet with dew, as they rode under the arching trees. Soon, however, they turned into the long white road, where already groups of people, some on foot, some on horseback, others in wooden carts, were wending their way to the city, whose walls and gates could be seen in the distance.
Before long they were joined by several friends, and a company of ten or twelve jogged along together, discussing the probable events of the day.
You might find it difficult to understand their conversation if you could hear it now, for though these country people of course spoke English, it was not the English of to-day. Though many of the words were those we know well, there were others which have since fallen out of use, or are pronounced differently; so if I put their talk into the language to which we are accustomed, you must remember that though the sense of it is the same, it was not spoken in just this way.
“Whereabouts does the first play begin?” asked Farmer Short, who had not been to the city for a whole year.
“At the gates of the priory in Mikelgate,” said the man who rode next to him.