y, even then,
than their fathers were before them. But God forbid any man to be a fool
to love, and be loved, as I have been. Else would he have prevented it.

When the mutton pasty was done, and Peggy and Smiler had dined well
also, out I went to wash at the pump, being a lover of soap and water,
at all risk, except of my dinner. And John Fry, who cared very little
to wash, save Sabbath days in his own soap, and who had kept me from the
pump by threatening loss of the dish, out he came in a satisfied manner,
with a piece of quill in his hand, to lean against a door-post, and
listen to the horses feeding, and have his teeth ready for supper.

Then a lady's-maid came out, and the sun was on her face, and she turned
round to go back again; but put a better face upon it, and gave a
trip and hitched her dress, and looked at the sun full body, lest the
hostlers should laugh that she was losing her complexion. With a long
Italian glass in her fingers very daintily, she came up to the pump in
the middle of the yard, where I was running the water off all my head
and shoulders, and arms, and some of my breast even, and though I had
glimpsed her through the sprinkle, it gave me quite a turn to see
her, child as I was, in my open aspect. But she looked at me, no whit
abashed, making a baby of me, no doubt, as a woman of thirty will do,
even with a very big boy when they catch him on a hayrick, and she said
to me in a brazen manner, as if I had been nobody, while I was shrinking
behind the pump, and craving to get my shirt on, 'Good leetle boy, come
hither to me. Fine heaven! how blue your eyes are, and your skin like
snow; but some naughty man has beaten it black. Oh, leetle boy, let me
feel it. Ah, how then it must have hurt you! There now, and you shall
love me.'

All this time she was touching my breast, here and there, very lightly,
with her delicate brown fingers, and I understood from her voice and
manner that she was not of this country, but a foreigner by extraction.
And then I was not so shy of her, because I could talk better English
than she; and yet I longed for my jerkin, but liked not to be rude to
her.

'If you please, madam, I must go. John Fry is waiting by the tapster's
door, and Peggy neighing to me. If you please, we must get home
to-night; and father will be waiting for me this side of the
telling-house.'

'There, there, you shall go, leetle dear, and perhaps I will go after
you. I have taken much love o