better. What fun it was! Aha, you thought you could shake me off, but
you didn't. Are you still mad?

Martin: Melancholy mad, since you will not let me rave.

Jessica: You are the less dangerous. But I hate you to be melancholy.

Martin: It is no one's fault but yours. How can I be jolly when my
story upsets you?

Jessica: How do you know it upsets me?

Martin: You put out your tongue at me.

Jessica: Did I?

Martin: Yes, without reason. So what could I do but whistle mine to the
winds?

Jessica: You were too hasty, for I had my reason.

Martin: If it was a good one I'll whistle mine back again.

Jessica: It was this. That no man in a love-tale should be wiser or
braver or more beautiful or more happy than the hero; or how can he be
the hero? Yet I am sure Hobb is the hero and none of the others,
because he is the only one old enough to be married.

Martin: Ambrose in nineteen, and will very soon be twenty.

Jessica: What's nineteen, or even twenty, in a man? Fie! a man's not a
man till he comes of age, and the hero's not Ambrose for all his
wisdom, though wisdom becomes a hero. Nor Heriot for all his beauty,
though a hero should be beautiful. Nor Hugh, who will one day be brave
enough for any hero, though now he's but a boy. Nor the happy Lionel,
who is only a child--yet I love a gay hero. It's none of these, full
though they be of the qualities of heroes. And here is your Hobb with
nothing to show but a fondness for roses.

Martin: You deserve to be stood in a corner for that nothing, Mistress
Jessica. Your reason was such a bad one that I see I must return to
sense if only to teach you a little of it. Did I not say Hobb had a
loving heart?

Jessica: But he was plain and simple and patient and contented. Are
these things for a hero?

Martin: Mistress Jessica, I will ask you a riddle. What is it--? Oh,
but first, I take it you love apple-trees?

Jessica: Who doesn't?

Martin: What is it, then, you love in an apple-tree? Is it the dancing
of the leaves in the wind? Is it the boldness of the boughs? Or perhaps
the loveliness of the flower in spring? Or again the fruit that ripens
of the flower amongst the leaves on the boughs? What is it you love in
an apple-tree?

Jessica: All riddles are traps. I must consider before I answer.

Martin: You shall consider until the conclusion of my story, and not
till you are satisfied that many things can be contained in one, will I
require your solution. And