fered you my
cake, and you wish only to pick off the nuts and the cherries."

"No," said Joan, "we wish you to put them on. Do you not love nuts and
cherries on a cake?"

"More than anything," said Martin.)

A long while ago, dear maidens, there were Lords in Gay Street, and up
and down the Street the cherry-trees bloomed in Spring as they bloomed
nowhere else in Sussex, and under the trees sang and danced the
loveliest lads and lasses in all England, with hearts like children.
And on all their holiday clothes they worked the leaf and branch and
flower and fruit of the cherry. And they never wore anything else but
their holiday clothes, because in Gay Street it was always holidays.

And a long while ago there were Gypsies on Nyetimber Common, the
merriest Gypsies in the southlands, with the gayest tatters and the
brightest eyes, and the maddest hearts for mirth-making. They were also
makers of lanterns when they were anything else but what all Gypsies
are.

And once the son of a Gypsy King loved the daughter of a Lord of Gay
Street, and she loved him. And because of this there was wrath in Gay
Street and scorn on Nyetimber, and all things were done to keep the
lovers apart. But they who attempt this might more profitably chase
wild geese. So one night in April they were taken under one of her
father's own wild cherries by the light of one of his father's own
lanterns. And it was her father and his father who found them, as they
had missed them, in the same moment, and were come hunting for
sweethearts by night with their people behind them.

Then the Lord of Gay Street pronounced a curse of banishment on his own
daughter, that she must go far away beyond the country of the floods,
and another on his own tree, that it might never blossom more. And
there and then it withered. And the Gypsy King pronounced as dark a
curse of banishment on his own son, and a second on his own lantern,
that it might never more give light. And there and then it went out.

Then from the crowd of gypsies came the oldest of them all, who was the
King's great-grandmother, and she looked from the angry parents to the
unhappy lovers and said, "You can blight the tree and make the lantern
dark; nevertheless you cannot extinguish the flower and the light of
love. And till these things lift the curse and are seen again united
among you, there will be no Lords in Gay Street nor Kings on Nyetimber."

And she broke a shoot from the cherry and