"Humph! an' I had the reins, I had driven my nag down another road," returned Barbara. "Who but Master Robin [a fictitious person] and Mistress Thekla [a fictitious person] were meetest, trow? But lo! you! what doth Mistress Walter but indite a letter unto the Master, to note that whereas she hath never set eyes on the jewel--and whose fault was that, prithee?--so, an' it liked Him above to do the thing thou wottest, she must needs have the floweret sent thither. And a cruel deal of fair words, how she loved and pined to see her, and more foolery belike. Marry La'kin! ere I had given her her will, I had seen her alongside of King Pharaoh at bottom o' the Red Sea. But the Master, what did he, but write back and say that it should be even as she would. Happy woman be her dole, say I!" And Barbara set down the milk-jug with a rough determinate air that must have hurt its feelings, had it possessed any. "Mistress Walter! that is, the Lady--" [Note 3.] "Ay--she," said Barbara hastily, before the name could follow. "Well, Bab, after all, methinks 'tis but like she should ask it. And if Master Robin be parson of that very same parish wherein she dwelleth, of a surety ye could never send the little one to him, away from her own mother?" "Poor little soul! she is well mothered!" said Barbara ironically. "Never to set eyes on the child for six long years; and then, when Mistress Avery, dear heart! writ unto her how sweet and _debonnaire_ [pretty, pleasing] the lily-bud grew, to mewl forth that it was so great a way, and her health so pitiful, that she must needs endure to bereave her of the happiness to come and see the same. Marry La'kin! call yon a mother!" "But it is a great way, Bab." "Wherefore went she so far off, then?" returned Barbara quickly enough. "And lo! you! she can journey thence all the way to York or Chester when she would get her the new fashions,--over land, too!--yet cannot she take boat to Bideford, which were less travail by half. An' yonder jewel had been mine, Marian, I would not have left it lie in the case for six years, trow!" "Maybe not, Bab," answered Marian in her quiet way. "Yet 'tis ill judging of our neighbour. And if the lady's health be in very deed so pitiful--"