d.

"Well, boy, you're thinking what?" questioned Lindley, impatiently.
"Though I offered not to pay you for your thoughts."

"No, I give you my thoughts for no pay whatsoever." Johan's voice was
still full of a restrained mirth. "And you must remember, too, that I
told you at the first that I myself was a lover of Mistress Judith
Ogilvie. That, perhaps, gives me better understanding of the maid.
That, perhaps, makes my thoughts of value."

"Well, and what do you think?" demanded Lindley.

"I--I was going to say"--the boy spoke slowly--"it seems to me
that--that Mistress Judith may already be in love."

"In love!" echoed Lindley. "And with whom, pray you, might Mistress
Judith be in love? Whom has she seen to fall in love with? Where has
she been to fall in love? It was only last week that you told me that
Mistress Judith had sworn that she would never be in love with any
man--that she would never be won by any man."

"Ay, but maids--some maids--change their minds as easily as their
ribbons, my master," quoth the boy, somewhat sententiously.

"What reason have you for your opinion that Mistress Judith may be in
love?" Lindley's question broke a short silence, and he bit his lip
over the obnoxious word.

"I--why, it seems to me that her docility might prove it, might it
not? I--it's a lover's heart that speaks to you, remember--a heart
that loves mightily, a heart that yearns mightily. But is not docility
on a maid's part a sign of love? Might it not be? It seems to me that
if I were a maid and I'd fallen desperately and woefully in love, I'd
be all for gentleness and quiet, I'd sew with my maids and dream of
love, I'd give all of my time to my father from whom love was so soon
to take me. That's what I should think a maid would do, and that is
what Mistress Judith has done for a week past. And then to-day, as I
hung about outside her windows, I heard her rating her maids. Mistress
Judith's voice can be quite high and shrill when she is annoyed, you
may remember; and the one complete sentence that I heard was this: 'Am
I always to be buried in a country house, think ye, and what would
town folk think of stitches such as those if they could see them? But
see them they'll not, for you'll have to do some tedious ripping here,
my girls, and some better stitches.' Now"--the boy's lips curled
dolorously--"does not that sound to you as though Mistress Judith were
contemplating some change in her estate, as though she h