"My husband?" said Judith, with a flush of color, and she laughed uneasily. "Nay, not so, good Prudence. He is not one that is likely to choose a country wench. Nay, nay, the juggler knave failed me—that is the truth of it; the charm was a thing of naught; and this young gentleman, if I met him by accident, the same might have happened to you, as I showed you before. Marry, I should not much crave to see him again, if anything like that were in the wind. This is Stratford town, 'tis not the forest of Arden; and in this neighborhood a maiden may not go forth to seek her lover, and coax him into the wooing of her. My father may put that into a play, but methinks if he heard of his own daughter doing the like, the key would quickly be turned on her. Nay, nay, good Prue, you shall not fright me out of doing a civil kindness to a stranger, and one that is in misfortune, by flaunting his lovership before my eyes. There be no such thing: do not I know the tokens? By my life, this gentleman is too courteous to have a lover's mind within him!"
"And you will go and see him again, Judith?" her friend asked, quickly.
"Nay, I said not that," Judith answered, complacently. "'Tis not the forest of Arden; would to Heaven it were, for life would move to a pleasanter music! I said not that I would go forth and seek him; that were not maidenly; and belike there would come a coil of talking among the gossips or soon or late; but at this time of the year, do you see, sweet cousin, the country is fair to look upon, and the air is sweeter in the meadows than it is here in the town; and if a lone damsel, forsaken by all else, should be straying silent and forlorn along the pathway or by the river-side, and should encounter one that hath but lately made her acquaintance, why should not that acquaintance be permitted in all modesty and courtesy to ripen into friendship? The harm, good Prue—the harm of it? Tush! your head is filled with childish fears of the wizard; that is the truth; and had you but come into the house to-day, and had but five minutes' speech of the young gentleman, you would have been as ready as any one to help in the beguilement of the tedium of his hiding, if that be possible to two or three silly women. And bethink you, was't not a happy chance that I wore my new velvet cap this morning?"
But she had been speaking too eagerly. This was a slip; and instantly she added, with some touch of confusion,
"I mean that I would fain have my father's friends in London know that his family are not so far out of the world, or out of the fashion."
"Is he one of your father's friends, Judith?" Prudence said, gravely.
"He is a friend of my father's friends, at least," said she, "and some day, I doubt not, he will himself be one of these. Truly that will be a rare sight, some evening at New Place, when we confront you with him, and tell him how he was charged with being a ghost, or a pirate, or an assassin, or something of the like."
"Your fancy runs free, Judith," her friend said. "Is't a probable thing, think you, that one that dares not come forth into the day, that is hiding from justice, or perchance scheming in Catholic plots, should become the friend of your house?"
"You saw him not at my grandmother's board, good Prue," said Judith, coolly. "The young gentleman hath the trick of making himself at home wherever he cometh, I warrant you. And when this cloud blows away, and he is free to come to Stratford, there is none will welcome him more heartily than I, for methinks he holdeth Master Benjamin Jonson in too high consideration, and I would have him see what is thought of my father in the town, and what his estate is, and that his family, though they live not in London, are not wholly of Moll the milkmaid kind. And I would have Susan come over too; and were she to forget her preachers and her psalms for but an evening, and were there any merriment going forward, the young gentleman would have to keep his wits clear, I'll be bound. There is the house, too, I would have him see; and the silver-topped tankard with the writing on it from my father's good friends; nay, I warrant me Julius would not think of denying me the loan of the King's letter to my father—were it but for an hour or two——"
But here they were startled into silence by a knocking below; then there was the sound of a man's voice in the narrow passage.