We did not hear you coming," said little Joan.

"Go away at once!" commanded Joscelyn.

Then all the girls cried "Go away!" together.

"My apple-gold maidens," said Martin Pippin, "I entreat you to let me
in. For the moon is up, and it is time to be sleeping or waking, in
sweet company. So I beseech you to admit me, dear maidens--if maidens
in truth you be, and not six apples bobbed off their stems."

"You may not come in," said Joscelyn, "in case you should release our
master's daughter, who sits in the Well-House pining to follow her
heart."

"Why, whither would she follow it?" asked Martin much surprised.

The milkmaids turned their faces away, and little Joan murmured, "It is
a secret."

Martin: I will put chains on my thoughts. But shall I not sing you a
tune you may dance to? I will make you a song for an August night, when
the moon rocks her way up and down the cradle of the sky, and you shall
rock on earth like any apple on the twig.

Jane: For my part, I see nothing against it.

Jessica: Gillian won't care little apples.

Joyce: She would not hear though we danced the round of the year.

Joscelyn: So long as he does not come in--

Jennifer: --or we go out.

"Oh, let us dance, do let us dance!" cried little Joan.

"Man," they importuned him in a single breath, "play for us and sing
for us, as quickly as you can!"

"Sweet ones," said Martin Pippin, shaking his head, "songs must be paid
for. And yet I do not know what to ask you, some trifle in kind it
should be. Why, now, I have it! If I give you the keys to the dance,
give me the keys to your little mistress, that I may keep her secure
from following her heart like a bird of passage, whither it's no
business of mine to ask."

At this request, made so gayly and so carelessly, the girls all looked
at one another in consternation. Then Joscelyn drew herself up to full
height, and pointing with her arm straight across the duckpond she
cried:

"Minstrel, begone!"

And the six girls, turning their backs upon him, moved away into the
shadows of the moon.

"Well-a-day!" sighed Martin Pippin, "how a fool may trip and never know
it till his nose hits the earth. I will sing to you for nothing."

But the girls did not answer.

Then Martin touched his lute and sang as follows, so softly and sweetly
that they, not regarding, hardly knew the sound of his song from the
heavy-sweet scent of the ungathered apples over their heads.

Toss me your gold