"What is your name, pretty maiden?" asked Peter, standing up beside her as she knelt and swept vigorously, raising a rare dust—and, to any eyes but those of a man, doing the work most awkwardly.
"I am called 'the Little Marie,'" said the girl, demurely, "but, of course, among those who are not my friends I am called by another name."
"Then I will call you 'the Little Marie'!" said Black Peter, in high delight, "and never so much as ask that other name, which is but for strangers."
He went to a cupboard in the wall which was labelled in large letters "Holy Bibles and Catechisms for the Use of the Prisoners." The jailer opened this most respectable and necessary receptacle, and took from it a square black bottle, short-necked and square-shouldered, a few hard biscuits such as seamen use, and two large, wide-mouthed glasses of twisted Venetian glass.
He came back with all these in his arms, and set them down together on the table. "Now," he said, coaxingly, "sit you down, Little Marie, and I will bring some water from the pitcher behind the door there. A glass of fine Hollands will keep out the chills of this night, for the wind is both shrewd and snell."
"Let me bring the water!" cried the Little Marie, gayly, clapping her hands ingenuously. "This is just like keeping house to John, my brother. Did I tell you his beard was like yours? See, I will stroke it. Even so does it fall so gracefully on brother John's breast!"
And as she tripped away with the tall jug in her hand to the pail behind the door, the jailer devoutly hoped that it would be much more than an hour and a half before his deputy should return.
The Little Marie was a long time in finding the proper water-pail, and it was not till Peter was half across the floor on his way to assist her that she appeared, carrying the beaker of water in one hand and a small earthenware cup in the other.
"A big, big jug for the mickle great cat,
And a little wee jug for the kitten."
So she chanted, to the tune of a Flanders nursery rhyme. Then she laughed merrily. And the amorous Black Peter, subdued to the soles of his boots, vowed that he had never heard anything half so prettily witty in all his life.