"Oh, very like. Folks may well sing that can afford to give twenty pound for a gown. If she'd her living to earn, and couldn't put a bit of bread in her mouth, nor in her children's, till she'd worked for it, she'd sing o' t'other side her mouth, most likely." "Anania, don't talk so unseemly. I'm sure you've a good enough place." "Oh, are you? I dress in samite, like the Queen, don't I?--and eat sturgeon and peacocks to my dinner?--and drive of a gilt char when I come to see folks? I should just like to know why she must have all the good things in life, and I must put up with the hard ones? I'm as good a woman as she is, I'm sure of that." "Cousin Anania," said Derette in a scandalised tone, "you should not tell us you're a good woman; you should wait till we tell you." "Then why didn't you tell me?" snapped Anania. "_I_ didn't tell you so because I don't think so," replied Derette with severity, "if you say such things of the Queen." "Much anybody cares what you think, child. Why, just look!--tuns and tuns of Gascon wine are sent to Woodstock for her: and here must I make shift with small ale and thin mead that's half sour. She's only to ask and have." "Well, I don't know," said Isel. "I wouldn't give my quiet home for a sup of Gascon wine--more by reason I don't like it. `Scenes at Westminster Palace' are not things I covet. My poor Manning was peaceable enough, and took a many steps to save me, and I doubt if King Henry does even to it. Eh dear! if I did but know what had come of my poor man! I should have thought all them Saracens 'd have been dead and buried by now, when you think what lots of folks has gone off to kill 'em. And as to `asking and having'--well, that hangs on what you ask for. There's a many folks asks for the moon, but I never heard tell as any of 'em had it." "Why do folks go to kill the Saracens?" demanded Derette, still unsatisfied on that point. "Saints know!" said her mother, using her favourite comfortable expletive. "I wish _he_ hadn't ha' gone--I do so!" "It's a good work, child," explained Anania. "Wouldn't it have been a good work for Father to stay at home, and save steps for Mother?" "I think it would, my child," said Gerhardt; "but God knoweth best, and He let thy father go. Sometimes what seems to us the best work is not the work God has appointed for us."