“I am hungry, child; but first put off that wet smock of thine.”
The girl crept behind the door of a great cupboard, with a blush of colour in her cheeks. Cloth rustled for a moment; a circle of blue and a slim pair of legs showed beneath the cupboard door; soon she was back again in a gown of apple green, fastening it with her fingers over the full swell of her bosom.
“What will my lord eat?”
“What you have, child.”
“Bread and dried fruit, the flesh of a kid, new milk and cheese, a little cider.”
“Give me milk, child, a mere flake of meat, some cheese and bread, and I ask nothing more. I will pay you for all I take.”
“Lord, how should you pay me, when I owe more than life to your sword?”
The little shepherdess went about her business with a barefooted tread, soft as any cat’s. The cottage proved a wonder of a place. The great cupboard disgorged a silver-rimmed horn, wooden platter, a napkin white as apple blossom, red fruit piled up in a brazen bowl. The girl set the things in order on the table, with an occasional curious look stolen at the figure in mail on the settle—splendid visitant in so humble a place. And what a rich voice the knight had,—how mellow, with its many modulations of tone. His hands too were wonderfully shapen, fingers long and tapering, with nails pink as sea-shells. There surely must be a face worth gazing at, for its very nobility, under that great brazen helmet that glinted in the half light of the room.
The meal was spread, but the guest still unprepared. The forest child dropped a curtsey, and a mild suggestion that the knight should make a beginning.