answered:

"But are you not ready for your breakfast, then?"

"Indeed I am," said she, "but I fear I have come away from it, to find
you."

"Nay," said the Dame, "you have brought it with you," and pointed to the
basket. She opened it and spread the wheaten rolls, the jar of honey,
the brown, new-laid egg and the clean, homespun napkin upon the Dame's
table and ate with wonderful relish, supplying herself with sweet butter
and yellow milk from the stores about her, and while she ate and the
Dame worked, they talked.

"You must be very busy, Dame, to be up with the dawn," she said.

"Why, that is so," said the Dame, "but women must needs be busy, as you
know well, I have no doubt."

She sighed and twisted her idle hands.

"I do not know that I can truly say I am always busy," she said
thoughtfully, "but I know that I have much to do--so much that I cannot
do it," and again she sighed.

"Why, that is odd," said the Dame, patting her butter; "I have so much
to do that I _must_ do it."

She knit her brows and tried to think of an answer, but the answers that
came to her mind had a foolish sound as she tried them over, so she said
nothing.

"The Farm lets no one rest," the Dame went on, "and you must know that
everything you brought with you this morning, the willow basket, the
napkin, the egg, the wheaten flour, the honey, all were made here, and
that means much work for many hands."

Now this put her in mind of something she had thought of before.

"But surely this is not the usual fashion in this country," she said
curiously, "nor your quaint-figured gowns, nor much else about the
place, for that matter. All this labour in flax and willow and
dairy-house seems like some old picture or some ancient song--who has
devised it, pray?"

"Aye, we keep the old ways," said the Dame quietly; "there must be some
to do it or they will be lost, I am thinking."

"But so near the city," she said, and again the Dame looked strangely at
her.

"Are we so near, then?" said she.

She knit her brows and it seemed that her mind, so clear since she woke,
was clouded as to all before that; only the feeling of some great
trouble, some dusty hurry, some ruinous failure haunted her. Also for
the first time that day she found herself afraid.

"You have not yet told me the name of this town," she said, trying to be
calm.

"It is not a town, my dear, it is called the Farm," said the Dame,
putting the finished rolls of butter