e tallest of the milkmaids, but you can't
help that. How old are you?

Joscelyn: Mind your own business.

Martin: Joscelyn, the first three times I saw you, you had your hair
down your back. But ever since I told you my first story you have done
it up, like beautiful dark flowers, on each side of your head. And it
is my belief that you have no business to have it up at all.

Joscelyn (very angrily): How dare you! Of course I have! Am I not
nearly sixteen?

Martin: Nearly?

Joscelyn: Well, next June.

Martin: Oh, Hebe! it's worse than I thought. How dare I? You
whipper-snapper! How dare YOU have us all under your thumb? How dare
YOU play the Gorgon to Gillian? How dare YOU cry your eyes out because
my lovers had an unhappy ending? Go back to your dolls'-house! What
does sixteen next June know about Adam? What does sixteen next June
know about love?

Joscelyn: Everything! how dare you? everything!

Martin: Am I to believe you? Then by all you know, you baby, give me
the sixth key of the Well-House!

And he took from his pocket the five keys he already had, and held out
his hand for the last one. Joscelyn's eyes grew bigger and bigger, and
the doubt that had troubled her all day became a certainty as she
looked from the keys to her comrades, who all got very red and hung
their heads.

"Why did you give them up?" demanded Joscelyn.

"Because," Martin answered for them, "they know everything about love.
But then they are all more than sixteen years of age, and capable of
making the right sort of ending which is so impossible to children like
you and me."

Then Joscelyn looked as old as she could and said, "Not so impossible,
Master Pippin, if--if--"

But all of a sudden she began to laugh. It was the first time Martin
had ever heard her laugh, or her comrades for six months. Their faces
cleared like magic, and they all clapped their hands and ran away. And
Martin got down from his bough, because when Joscelyn laughed she
didn't look more than fourteen.

"If what, Joscelyn?" he said.

"If you'd stolen the right shoe-string, Martin," said she. And she
stuck out her right foot with its neatly-laced yellow slipper. Then
Martin knelt down, and instead of lacing the left shoe unlaced the
right one, and inside the yellow slipper found the sixth key just under
the instep. "Is that the right ending?" said Joscelyn. And Martin held
the little foot in his hands rubbing it gently, and said
compassionately, "It mu