"Then Monday? I beseech thee, make it no later than Monday, and thou dost wish to keep me in fairly reasonable mind."
"Well, Monday, an' it please the fate thou has maligned," she answered, smiling. Noticing that the firm, brown hand was withdrawn a few inches from the place it had held on the panelling of the door, the girl gave a mischievous little smile and let the knocker fall. It made a loud echoing through the empty hall, and the player raised his laced black-velvet cap, gave Debora so low a bow that the silver-gray plume in it swept the ground, and, before the heavy-footed Mistress Blossom made her appearance, was on his way swiftly towards London Bridge.
Debora went up the narrow stairs with eyes ashine, and a smile curving her lips. For the moment Darby was forgotten. When she closed the chamber door she remembered.
It was past high noon, and Dame Blossom had been waiting in impatience since eleven to serve dinner. Yet the girl would not now dine alone, but stood by the gabled window which looked down on the road, watching, watching, and thinking, till it almost seemed that another morning had passed.
Along Southwark thoroughfare through the day went people from all classes, groups of richly-dressed gentlemen, beruffled and befeathered; their laces and their hair perfuming the wind. Officers of the Queen booted and spurred; sober Puritans, long-jowled and over-sallow, living protests against frivolity and light-heartedness. Portly aldermen, jealous of their dignity. Swarthy foreigners with silver rings swinging in their ears. Sun-browned sailors. Tankard-bearers carrying along with their supply of fresh drinking water the cream of the hour's gossip. Keepers of the watch with lanterns trimmed for the night's burning adangle from oaken poles braced across their shoulders. Little maidens whose long gowns cut after the fashion of their mothers, fretted their dancing feet. Ruddy-hued little lads, turning Catherine wheels for the very joy of being alive, and because the winter time was over and the wine of spring had gone to the young heads.
Debora stood and watched the passing of the people till she wearied of them, and her ears ached with sounds of the street.
Something had gone away from the girl, some carelessness, some content of the heart, and in its place had come a restlessness, as deep, as impossible to quiet, as the restlessness of the sea.
After a time Mistress Blossom knocked at the door, and coaxed her to go below.
"There is no sight o' the young Master, Mistress Debora. Marry, but he be over late, an' the jugged hare I made ready for his pleasuring is fair wasted. Dost think he'll return here to dine or hast gone to the Tabard?"
"I know not," answered Debora, shortly, following the woman down stairs. "He gave me no hint of his intentions, good Mistress Blossom."