So the Earl’s daughter spoke to the man. “If you were not so bitter ugly,” quoth she, “my father the Earl would have us marry.”
“Bitter ugly am I,” said the man, “and you as fair as May. Bitter ugly I am, and what of that? It was so my fathers——”
“In the name of God,” said the Earl’s daughter, “let your fathers be!“
“If I had done that,” said the man, “you had never been chaffering with me here in the market, nor your father the Earl watching with the end of his eye.”
“But come,” quoth the Earl’s daughter, “this is a very strange thing, that you would have me wed for a shoe of a horse, and it rusty.”
“In my thought,” quoth the man, “one thing is as good——”
“O, spare me that,” said the Earl’s daughter, “and tell me why I should marry.”
“Listen and look,” said the man.
Now the wind blew through the Poor Thing like an infant crying, so that her heart was melted; and her eyes were unsealed, and she was aware of the thing as it were a babe unmothered, and she took it to her arms and it melted in her arms like the air.
“Come,” said the man, “behold a vision of our children, the busy hearth, and the white heads. And let that suffice, for it is all God offers.”