t on thyself to offer my bread and
meat to a good-for-naught hussy as ne'er had a civil word for any o' us!
Thou hast given her bed-room under my roof without so much as 'by your
leave!' Thou godless hussy, thou! Where be th' jade? I say, where be
she? Where be she?"

"Where thou shalt not come at her in thy present humor, mother," saith
the lass, standing with one arm reached out across the door-way, like as
though in verity she had been the mother and her dam a naughty child.

"How? Dost word me? dost word me?" saith my wife. "How? dost take any
stray cat to kitten in my house an' then word me too?"--so saith she.

Then saith th' lass, "Well can I understand," saith she, "how, if thou
canst speak i' this fashion o' thy sister's child, thou canst also speak
to thy own as sure no mother e'er spoke ere this." Then, changing all
suddenly her tone, and dropping down her arm from the door, "Go an thou
like," saith she, "to abuse the poor creature who hath come to ask thy
help in time o' trouble; but just so surely as thou dost turn her out o'
door to lie i' th' straw like any common callet, just so sure do I
follow her, to fare as she fares, and all the village shall know what
thou hast done."

Then for some minutes did they twain stand and gaze upon one another,
and at last down flumps my wife into a chair, as though she would break
it in pieces for very rage; but being waxed sulky, and her own wrath
cowed, as 'twere, by her daughter's more righteous wrath, she saith
nothing more of 't, good or bad.

In three weeks' time th' child is born, and as sound and as pretty a
babe as e'er I clapt eyes on, and Keren a-dangling of him as natural as
though she herself had been a mother, time and again.

"What say'st thou now, lass?" quoth she. "Wilt trust Keren after this?"

"Is he sound, verily?" saith the poor little dame, looking shyly upon
him.

"Never a spot so big as the splash on a guinea-flower!" saith Keren.
"And ears like sea-shells."

So, after a-kissing of them both, and th' top o' th' babe's head (as
'twas permitted me to do), I steals out and leaves them together.

Well, ne'er saw thou a child grow as did that child. Meseemed he
sprouted like corn after a rain; and in five months a was waxed so
strong a could stand on 's feet a-holding to his mother's kirtle. But,
strange to say or not, as thou wilt have 't, he did seem to love Keren
more than he did th' mother that bore him, a-crying for her did she but
so