she keeps so well. And under her charge a little secret will
grow into a big one, with a hundred charms and additions it had not
when I confided it to her, so that I shall hardly know it again when I
ask for it: so beautiful, so important, so mysterious will it have
become in the woman's care. Oh, believe me, Mistress Jennifer, it is
women who keep secrets and men who neglect them.

Jennifer: If I had only thought of these things to say! But I am not
clever at argument like men.

Martin: I suspect these clever arguers. They can always find the right
thing to say, even if they are in the wrong. Women are not to be blamed
for washing their hands of them for ever.

Jennifer: I know. Yet I cannot help wondering who bakes them
gingerbread for Sunday.

Martin: Let them go without. They do not deserve gingerbread.

Jennifer: I know, I know. But they like it so much. And it is nice
making it, too.

Martin: Then I suppose it will have to be made till the last of
Sundays. What a bother it all is.

Jennifer: I know. Good night, dear Master Pippin.

Martin: Dear milkmaid, good night. There lie your fellows, careless of
the color of the grass they lie on, and of the years that lie on them.
They have forsworn the baking of cakes, the eating of which begets
dreams, to which women are not given. Go lie with them, and be if you
can as careless and dreamless as they are.

And then, seeing the tears refilling her eyes, he hastily pulled out
his handkerchief again and wiped them as they fell, saying, "But if you
cannot--if you cannot (don't cry so fast!)--if you cannot, then give me
your key (dear Jennifer, please dry up!) to Gillian's Well-House,
because you were glad that my tale ended gladly, and also because all
lovers, no matter of what age, are green enough, and chiefly because my
handkerchief's sopping."

Then Jennifer caught his hands in hers and whispered, "Oh, Martin! are
they? ALL lovers?--are they green enough?"

"God help them, yes!" said Martin Pippin.

She dropped his hands, leaving her key in them, and looked up at him
with wet lashes, but happiness behind them. So he stooped and kissed
the last tears from her eyes. Since his handkerchief had become quite
useless for the purpose.

And she stole back to her place, and he lay down in his, and Jennifer
dreamed that she was baking gingerbread, and Martin that he was eating
it.

"Maids! maids! maids!"

It was Old Gillman on the heels of dawn.

"A pest on