But from the hooded dormers of the city, from the lofty gable spy-holes, from the narrow windows of Baltic staircase-towers the good wives of Courtland looked down to see the great folk pass. And their comment was not that of the rabble. "Married, is she?" they said among themselves. "Well, God bless her comely face! It minds me of my own wedding. But, by my faith, I looked more at my Fritz than she doth at the Muscovite. I declare all her eyes are for that handsome lad who rides at her left elbow——"
"Nay, he is not handsome—look at his face. It is as white as a new-washen clout hung on a drying line. Who can he be?"
"Minds me o' the Prince's wife, the proud lady that flouted him, mightily he doth—I should not wonder if he were her brother."
"Yes, by my faith, dame—hast hit it! So he doth. And here was I racking my brains to think where I had seen him before, and then, after all, I never had seen him before!"
"A miracle it is, gossip, and right pale he looks! Yet I should not wonder if our Margaret loves him the most. Her eyes seek to him. Women among the great are not like us. They say they never like their own husbands the best. What wouldst thou do, good neighbour Bette, if I loved your Hans better than mine own stupid old Fritz! Pull the strings off my cap, dame, sayst thou? That shows thee no great lady. For if thou wast of the great, thou wouldst no more than wave thy hand and say, 'A good riddance and a heartsome change!'—and with that begin to make love to the next young lad that came by with his thumbs in his armholes and a feather in his cap!"
"And what o' the childer—the house-bairns—what o' them? With all this mixing about, what comes o' them—answer me that, good dame!"
"What, Gossip Bette—have you never heard? The childer of the great, they suck not their own mothers' milk—they are not dandled in their own mothers' arms. They learn not their Duty from their mothers' lips. When they are fractious, a stranger beats them till they be good——"
"Ah," cried the court of matrons all in unison, "I would like to catch one of the fremit lay a hand on my Karl—my Kirsten—that I would! I would comb their hair for them, tear the pinner off their backs—that I would!" "And I!" "And I!"
"Nay, good gossips all," out of the chorus the voice of the dame learned in the ways of the great asserted itself; "that, again, proves you all no better than burgherish town-folk—not truly of the noble of the land. For a right great lady, when she meets a foster-nurse with a baby at the breast, will go near and say—I have heard 'em—'La! the pretty thing—a poppet! Well-a-well, 'tis pretty, for sure! And whose baby may this be?'
"'Thine own, lady, thine own!'"