"I speak against him?" said Judith, as she rose, and there was an air of calm indifference on her face. "In truth, I have naught to say against the good man. 'Tis well that the court ladies are pleased with Demogorgons and such idle stuff, and 'tis passing well that he knows the trade. Now give ye good-night and sweet dreams, sweet mouse; and good thanks, too, for the reading."
But at the door below—Prudence having followed her with the candle—she turned, and said, in a whisper:
"Now tell me true, good cousin: think you my father hath ever done better than this magic island, and the sweet Miranda, and the rest?"
"You know I am no judge of such matters, Judith," her friend answered.
"But, dear heart, were you not bewitched by it? Were you not taken away thither? Saw you not those strange things before your very eyes?"
"In good sooth, then, Judith," said the other, with a smile, "for the time being I knew not that I was in Stratford town, nor in our own country of England either."
Judith laughed lightly and quickly, and with a kind of pride too. And when she got home to her own room, and once more regarded the roll of sheets, before bestowing them away in a secret place, there was a fine bravery of triumph in her eyes. "Ben Jonson!" she said, but no longer with any anger, rather with a sovereign contempt. And then she locked up the treasure in her small cupboard of boxes, and went down-stairs again to seek out her mother, her heart now quite recovered from its envy, and beating warm and equally in its disposition toward all mankind, and her mind full of a perfect and complacent confidence. "Ben Jonson!" she said.