“The wench is above, eh?”
“This hour or more.”
“Dame, I have much to gossip over with ye about our Bess. She is a dangerous wench and needs a master. There’ll be no peace with us, dame, till the girl is stalled.”
Isaac, kindling to his subject, began to talk to the old woman, significantly, about betrothing the girl to Dan without delay. He had much to put forward in justification of the measure. Bess’s beauty had become an apple of discord in the hamlet; all the young men wanted her, and Black Dan would put up with no rival. Isaac spoke mysteriously of the need for good-fellowship among the forest-folk; there must be no mating of Bess to a bachelor outside the hamlet; she was one of them and with them she must remain. Old Ursula looked surly and displeased during the patriarch’s harangue. The match was little to her liking, and she distrusted Dan’s ability to make marriage bearable to such a woman as Bess.
“I may as well tell ye, Isaac,” she said, sourly, “that the wench does not care a brass button for your Dan.”
“Who does she fancy then, dame, eh?”
“I thought once she was for liking young David. She is a powerful-tempered wench is Bess, and she don’t like being driven.”
Isaac puffed at his pipe and frowned.
“Odd’s my life,” he said, “the wench must be taught her place. My Dan’s the first man in the forest, eh? What better lad does the wench look for? I’ll wager that we will soon persuade her.”
“You be careful of Bess,” quoth the old woman, solemnly.