d.

"May Satan fly away with your hearth to the lake of fire and brimstone,"
shouted Denys, who could speak Flemish fluently. "Your own servant bade
me sit there till you came, else I had ne'er troubled your hearth. My
malison on it, and on the churlish roof-tree that greets an unoffending
stranger this way," and he strode scowling to the door.

"Oh! oh!" ejaculated Catherine, frightened, and also a little
conscience-stricken; and the virago sat suddenly down and burst into
tears. Her daughter followed suit quietly, but without loss of time.

A shrewd writer, now unhappily lost to us, has somewhere the following
dialogue:

She. "I feel all a woman's weakness."

He. "Then you are invincible."

Denys, by anticipation, confirmed that valuable statement; he stood at
the door looking ruefully at the havoc his thunderbolt of eloquence had
made.

"Nay, wife," said he, "weep not neither for a soldier's hasty word. I
mean not all I said. Why, your house is your own, and what right in it
have I? There now, I'll go."

"What is to do?" said a grave manly voice.

It was Eli; he had come in from the shop.

"Here is a ruffian been a-scolding of your women folk and making them
cry," explained Denys.

"Little Kate, what is't? for ruffians do not use to call themselves
ruffians," said Eli the sensible.

Ere she could explain, "Hold your tongue, girl," said Catherine; "Muriel
bade him sat down, and I knew not that, and wyted on him; and he was
going and leaving his malison on us, root and branch. I was never so
becursed in all my days, oh! oh! oh!"

"You were both somewhat to blame; both you and he," said Eli calmly.
"However, what the servant says the master should still stand to. We
keep not open house, but yet we are not poor enough to grudge a seat at
our hearth in a cold day to a wayfarer with an honest face, and, as I
think, a wounded man. So, end all malice, and sit ye down!"

"Wounded?" cried mother and daughter in a breath.

"Think you a soldier slings his arm for sport?"

"Nay, 'tis but an arrow," said Denys cheerfully.

"But an arrow?" said Kate, with concentrated horror. "Where were our
eyes, mother?"

"Nay, in good sooth, a trifle. Which, however, I will pray mesdames to
accept as an excuse for my vivacity. 'Tis these little foolish trifling
wounds that fret a man, worthy sir. Why, look ye now, sweeter temper
than our Gerard never breathed, yet, when the bear did but strike a
piece no bigger than a cro