FullReads

Lady Dorothy and Lord Humphrey in a breath. –Nay, go on, go on.

Nurse Crumpet. –Well, well, o’ all the story-loving bairns! But I must invent me a new history for the next time o’ telling.

Lord Humphrey. –Nay, that thou shalt not. We will ne’er like any as well as we like this one. So despatch.

Nurse Crumpet. –But my lady had also an adopted daughter, a niece o’ my lord’s–one Mistress Marian Every–and she walked beside the little Lady Patience as night might walk beside day, for she was as brown o’ skin as a mountain stream, and her hair like a cloud at even-tide, dark, but of no certain color, albeit as soft as ravelled silk, and marvellous hard to comb on account o’ its fineness. Mistress Marian was full head and shoulders taller than her cousin, the Lady Patience, and she could lift her aloft in her arms, and swing her from side to side, as a supple bough swings a bird. And her eyes were dark, and cool to gaze into, like a pool o’ clear water o’er autumn leaves, and sometimes there were glints o’ light in them, like the spikes i’ th’ evening-star when thou dost gaze steadily upon it. Black and white were not more different than were they, and they resembled even less in mind than they did in body. When Lady Patience waxed wroth, her cheeks burned like two coals, and thou couldst hear her little teeth grinding together, like pebbles squeezed i’ th’ palm o’ thy hand; but when Mistress Marian was an-angered, the blood rushed back to her heart, and she was whiter than a lamb at the shearing, and her lips like white threads. Then would the light shoot and spin in her eyes, and her nostrils suck in and out, like those of a fretful horse. And she was fierce after the manner of a man rather than of a maid. Moreo’er, she was full a year younger than the Lady Patience; but she looked it not; rather did her ladyship look full two years younger than Mistress Marian. And I loved them both, and tried as a Christian not to prefer one before the other; but what with my lady’s stealings of her arms about my neck as I sat at my stitchery, and popping of comfits in my pocket when I would be otherwise engaged, and teasings, and ticklings, and sundry other pretty witcheries which I do not at this day recall, I was fairly cozened into loving her the best. (Honey, I charge thee hold my fan betwixt thee and the fire.) But to continue.–Mistress Marian was aye courteous and kindly to me as heart could wish, and every night did she thank me i’ th’ prettiest fashion, when I had combed and unpinned her for the night; but, Lord! I had much ado to get Lady Patience combed or unpinned at all! First would she jump with both knees upon mine, and hug my very breath away; then, when I had at last coaxed her to get down, first she would perch on one leg and then o’ the other, and then be a-twisting her head now over this shoulder, now over that, to see how I came on with the unpinning, that it was with a prayer to God that I finally set her night-gown over her shoulders, and led her to bed. As for her prayers–Jesu aid me and pardon her!–’twas a matter of hours to get her to say “Our Father” straight through, what with her vowing that she wished not bread every day, and how that if his lordship her father forgave not trespassers (for I could ne’er draw the difference between trespass es and trespass ers into her pretty pate), neither would she; and how she did not believe God would lead her into temptation at any time, but that it was the Devil; and how it must anger God even to think of such doings on His part–what, I say, with all this, methought sometimes it would be cock-crow ere I got her safely to sleep. And all this time Mistress Marian would be lying as quiet as any mouse, with her big plait of hair between her fingers, for so she always slept, with her hair fast in her hands, as though she loved its beauty; and in truth it was the one great beauty she had, for my little lady put her out with her glitter as the sunlight doth extinguish a morning moon.