A brother to dragons, and other old-time talesRives, Amélie
Science
A brother to dragons, and other old-time tales
Rives, Amélie
American fiction -- 19th century
continue.--Mistress Marian was aye courteous and kindly to me as heart
could wish, and every night did she thank me i' th' prettiest fashion,
when I had combed and unpinned her for the night; but, Lord! I had much
ado to get Lady Patience combed or unpinned at all! First would she jump
with both knees upon mine, and hug my very breath away; then, when I had
at last coaxed her to get down, first she would perch on one leg and
then o' the other, and then be a-twisting her head now over this
shoulder, now over that, to see how I came on with the unpinning, that
it was with a prayer to God that I finally set her night-gown over her
shoulders, and led her to bed. As for her prayers--Jesu aid me and
pardon her!--'twas a matter of hours to get her to say "Our Father"
straight through, what with her vowing that she wished not bread every
day, and how that if his lordship her father forgave not trespassers
(for I could ne'er draw the difference between trespass_es_ and
trespass_ers_ into her pretty pate), neither would she; and how she did
not believe God would lead her into temptation at any time, but that it
was the Devil; and how it must anger God even to think of such doings on
His part--what, I say, with all this, methought sometimes it would be
cock-crow ere I got her safely to sleep. And all this time Mistress
Marian would be lying as quiet as any mouse, with her big plait of hair
between her fingers, for so she always slept, with her hair fast in her
hands, as though she loved its beauty; and in truth it was the one great
beauty she had, for my little lady put her out with her glitter as the
sunlight doth extinguish a morning moon.
Now I had been at the castle scarce two months when one day it chances
that I hear my lady a-telling o' my lord how as her brother, Lord
Charles Radnor, dying wifeless, had left his only son to her care until
he should come of age. And on that Tuesday the little lord set foot in
the castle; and my lady was down at the door-way to meet him, in a new
velvet gown, with her wimple sewn in fine pearls, and my lord with her;
but my two nurslings waxed shy at the last minute, and would not come
down, but leaned and peered through the posts o' the stair-rail, and my
little lady let fall one o' her shoes in her eagerness to glimpse at her
new cousin. And straightway ran the lad and lifted the wee shoe, and
looked upward, laughing, and my lord and lady having retired into the
dining-hall, to see that some cold viands were in readiness (it being
then near to nightfall, though not yet supper hour).--"Ho! thou little
cinder witch," cried he; "I am the prince that has found thy shoe, and
when I shall have found thee, if that thy temper be as small as thy
shoe, fear not but that I will kiss thee too!" With that, he ran up the
stair-way, two and three steps at a leap.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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