“Dearwyn, the same thought has overtaken us both!” Randalin broke in anxiously, and now she was all awake and staying the other’s busy fingers to ensure her attention. “Not a few times it has seemed to me that he looks weary of heart, as though some struggle were sapping his strength. He swears it is not so, yet I think the rebellion of his pride against king-serving—”
“If you want to know my belief, it is that he carries trouble in his breast about you,” Dearwyn interrupted.
“About me?” So much hurt surprise was in Randalin’s manner that the little maid begged forgiveness with caresses of the swaying clover.
“Be not vexed, honey, but in truth he is overcome by the oddest look whensoever he watches you without your seeing,—as though he were not sure of you, in some way, and yet—Oh, I cannot explain it! Only tell me this,—does he not ask you, many times and oft, if you love him, or if others love you, or such like?”
In the midst of shaking her head, Randalin paused and her mouth became as round as her eyes. “Foolishly do I recall it! As if he would! And yet—Dearwyn, he has asked me four times if any Danes visit us here. Would you think that he could be—”
“Jealous?” Dearwyn dropped her flowers to clap her hands softly. “Tata, I have guessed his distemper rightly. Let no one say that I am not a witch for cleverness! Ah, you can have the best fun that ever any maid could have! If you could but make him believe something about that Danishman that Teboen saw last winter!”
“Last winter?” Randalin repeated. “Oh! I had altogether forgotten him. It seems that it has not been truthfully spoken when—”
The little Angle smothered the rest in her rapturous embrace. “The ring, Tata,—that would be the cream of all! Let him think that Rothgar gave it to you, that he is your lover! I would give many kirtles to see his face.” “Rothgar?” Randalin’s voice was light with scorn. “As likely would! be to think him love-struck for the serving-wench who sparkled her eyes at him, as he to think that Rothgar Lodbroksson could count for aught with me! Yet I say nothing against the fun it would be. It may be that if he take notice of the thing and question me—just to see how he would look—” She broke off discreetly, but the one elf which the Abbot had not exorcised crept out and danced in the dimple of her cheek.
Dearwyn shook her floral rod with an assumption of severity. “I trust he will be sorely disquieted,” she said. “He deserves no otherwise for his behavior last winter. Are you so soft of heart, Tata, that you are never going to reckon with him for that?”
The dimple-elf took wing and all the mischief in the girl’s eyes seemed to go with him. “Those days are buried,” she said. “Let the earth grow green above them.” And suddenly she leaned forward and hid her face on the other’s shoulder. “Bring them not before me, Dearwyn, my friend, until I am a little surer of my happiness. It is so new yet, Dearwyn, so new! And it came to me so suddenly that sometimes it almost seems as if it might depart as suddenly from me.” A while they nestled together without speaking, the little maid’s cheek resting lovingly on her friend’s dark hair.