no more lore for lying
than I have."

"Mistress Ricarda!" said Agatha, joining them as they rose from the
table, "I do right heartily pray you of better acquaintance. I trust
you and I be of the same fashion of thinking, and both love laughter
better than tears."

"In good sooth, I hate long faces and sad looks," said Ricarda,
accepting Agatha's offered kiss of friendship.

"You be not an ill-matched pair," added Amphillis, laughing. "Only, I
pray you, upset not the quirle by over much prancing."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1. Still used in its original sense of uncomfortable.

Note 2. The Dutch were then known as High Dutch, the Germans as Low
Dutch.

Note 3. Agreeable and ready in conversation.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

BEATEN BACK.

"I know not why my path should be at times
So straitly hedged, so strangely barred before:
I only know God could keep wide the door;
But I can trust."

"Mistress Perrote, I pray you counsel me. I am sore put to it to baffle
my cousin's inquirations touching our Lady. How she cometh to know
there is any such cannot I say; but I may lightly guess that Agatha hath
let it 'scape: and in old days mine uncle was wont to say, none never
could keep hidlis [secrets] from Ricarda. Truly, might I have known
aforehand my Lady Foljambe's pleasure, I could have found to mine hand
to pray her not to advance Ricarda hither: not for that I would stand in
her way, but for my Lady's sake herself."

"I know. Nay, as well not, Phyllis. It should tend rather to thine own
disease, for folk might lightly say thou wert jealous and unkindly to
thy kin. The Lord knoweth wherefore such things do hap. At times I
think it be to prevent us from being here in earth more blissful than it
were good for us to be. As for her inquirations, parry them as best
thou mayest; and if thou canst not, then say apertly [openly] that thou
art forbidden to hold discourse thereanentis."

Amphillis shook her head. She pretty well knew that such an assertion
would whet Ricarda's curiosity, and increase her inquisitive queries.

"Mistress Perrote, are you ill at ease?"

"Not in health, thank God. But I am heavy of heart, child. Our Lady is
in evil case, and she is very old."

We should not now call a woman very old who was barely sixty years of
age; we scarcely think that more than elderly. But in 1373, when the
numerous wars and insurrections o