"Troth--your health, mistress!--I am glad you have ale in store. Would there be enough to entertain a few guests withal--some dozen or score poor friends of mine, if they were travelling this way? To tell the truth, I should not like to waste this wine upon such."
"Travellers never pass this way," said Meg, plainly not knowing what to make of him.
"Oh, we are some way from the highroad here, indeed; but a foolish friend or so might turn out a mile for the pleasure of my company."
"I know not what you'd set before 'em to eat, if there were a dozen."
"Marry, they would have to bring eatables with 'em,--my reason for having 'em as guests. Only so there be ale enough."
"Oh, there is ale," said Meg, without further comment.
Ravenshaw, munching the cakes, and oft wetting his throat, looked around the hall. The front doorway faced a wide fireplace at the rear, now empty. At the right was a door to a small apartment, a kind of porter's room, lighted by a single high narrow window; farther back in the hall was the entrance to a passage communicating with other parts of the house; and still farther back, a door leading to the kitchen. At the left hand were, first, a door to a large room, and, second, the opening to a passage like that on the right.
By way of this left-hand passage, and a narrow staircase which led from it, the captain was presently shown by old Jeremy to his chamber. It was large and bare, hung with rotten arras, and contained a bed, a joint-stool, and a table with ewer and basin; its window looked into the courtyard.
He flung his bruised body on the bed, and soon sank deliciously to sleep.
Meanwhile old Jeremy, returning to the hall, found Meg sitting with her chin upon her hands, and gazing into the empty fireplace.
"A sturdy fellow," whispered the old man, pointing backward with his thumb, and taking on a jocular air. "Cast eyes on him; a goodly husband mends all; cast eyes on him!"
"Thou'rt a fool; go thy ways!" quoth Meg; but she did not move.
"O father, where's my love? were you so careless To let an unthrift steal away your child?" --_The Case Is Altered._
Millicent, after the riot had ceased and dinner had been eaten, passed the day with a palpitating heart but a resolved mind. Under cover of her usual needlework, she fashioned a sort of large linen wallet, in which to carry the few things she wished to take with her. Her emotions were, in a less degree, similar to those which had affected her in the hours preceding her former attempt to run away. At supper she looked often with a hidden tenderness at the composed, unsuspecting face of her mother. When the light of evening faded she slipped to her chamber, and put a few chosen objects into the receptacle she had made, wrapped this in a hooded cloak, and dropped it from her window into the concealed space behind the garden shrubbery. She then waited, watching from the window that part of Friday Street in which Master Holyday must appear.