what must I do with this key?"

"Oh, Martin! why do you bother me so about an old key? Can't you see
I'm busy?"

"Oh, Joyce! when you laugh I must--I must--"

"Yes?"

"I must!"

And he caught her two little feet in his hands as she next flew by, and
kissed each one upon the instep.

Then he ran to his bed under the hedge, and she sat where she was till
her laughing turned to smiling, and her smiling to sleeping.

"Maids! maids! maids!"

It was morning.

"To your hiding-place, Master Pippin!" urged Joscelyn. "It's our master
come again."

Martin concealed himself with speed, and an instant later the farmer's
burly face peered through the gap in the hedge.

"Good morrow, maids."

"Good morrow, master."

"Has my daughter stopped weeping yet?"

"No, master," said Joyce, "but I begin to think that she will before
long."

"A little longer will be too long," moaned Gillman, "for my purse is
running dry with these droughty times, and I shall have to mortgage the
farm to buy me ale, since I am foiled of both water and milk. Who would
have daughters when he might have sons? Gillian!" he cried, "when will
ye learn that old heads are wiser than young ones?"

But Gillian paid no more attention to him than to the cawing rooks in
the elms in the oatfield.

"Take your bread, maids," said Gillman, "and heaven send us grace
to-morrow."

"Just an instant, master," said Joyce. "I would like to know if Blossom
my Shorthorn is well?"

"As well as a child without its mother, maid, though Michael has turned
nurse to her. But she seems sworn to hold back her milk till you come
again. Rack and ruin, nothing but rack and ruin!"

And off he went.

Then breakfast was prepared as on the previous day, and Gillian's stale
loaf was broken for the ducks. But Joscelyn pointed out that one of the
kissing-crusts had been pulled off in the night.

"Your stories, Master Pippin, are doing their work," said she.

"I begin to think so," said Martin cheerfully. And then they fell to on
their own white loaves and sweet apples.

When they had breakfasted Martin observed that he could make better and
longer daisy-chains than any one else in the world, and his statement
was pooh-poohed by six voices at once. For girls' fingers, said these
voices, had been especially fashioned by nature for the making of
daisy-chains. Martin challenged them to prove this, and they plucked
lapfuls of the small white daisies with big yellow eyes, an