JULIA. O Chris, who is there to say I must bide in one place when all in me is thirsting to be in t’other! CHRIS. I’m sure I don’t know. NAT. I should move about where I did like, if ’twas me. TANSIE. A fine young lady like you can do as she pleases. JULIA. Well then, it pleases me to bide with you in the free air. CHRIS. Our life, ’tis a poor life, and wandering. ’Tis food one day, and may be going without the next. ’Tis the sun upon the faces of us one hour—and then the rain. But ’tis in freedom that us walks, and we be the masters of our own limbs. JULIA. Will you be good to me if I journey with you? CHRIS. Ah, ’tis not likely as I’ll ever fail you, mistress. JULIA. Do not call me mistress any longer, Chris, my name is Julia. CHRIS. ’Tis a well-sounding name, and one as runs easy as clear water upon the tongue. JULIA. Tansie, how will it be for me to go with you? TANSIE. ’Twill be well enough with the spirit of you I don’t doubt, but how’ll it be with the fine clothes what you have on? NAT. [_Suddenly looking up_.] Why, there’s Susan coming. JULIA. [_Looking in the same direction_.] So that is Susan? TANSIE. I count as her has had a smartish job to get away from th’ old missis so early in the day. CHRIS. ’Tis a rare old she cat, and handy with the claw’s of her, Susan’s missis. [SUSAN _comes shyly forward_. NAT. Come you here, Susan, and sit along of we. JULIA. Yes, sit down with us in this cool shade, Susan. You look warm from running. SUSAN. O, I didn’t know you was here, Mistress Julia. JULIA. Well, Susan, and so you live at Road Farm. Are you happy there? SUSAN. I should be if ’twern’t for mistress. JULIA. No mistress could speak harshly to you, Susan—you are so young and pretty. SUSAN. Ah, but mistress takes no account of aught but the work you does, and the tongue of her be wonderful lashing. JULIA. Then how comes it that you have got away to the forest so early on a week day? SUSAN. ’Tis that mistress be powerful took up with sommat else this afternoon, and so I was able to run out for a while and her didn’t notice me. TANSIE. Why Su, what’s going on up at the farm so particular to-day? SUSAN. ’Tis courting. ALL. Courting? SUSAN. Yes. That ’tis. ’Tis our Master William what’s dressed up in his Sunday clothes and gone a-courting with a basket of green stuff on his arm big enough to fill the market, very nigh. CHRIS. Well, well, who’d have thought he had it in him? NAT. He’s a gentleman what’s not cut out for courting, to my mind. SUSAN. Indeed he isn’t, Nat. And however the mistress got him dressed and set off on that business, I don’t know. JULIA. But you have not told us who the lady is, Susan. SUSAN. [_Suddenly very embarrassed_.] I—I—don’t think as I do rightly know who ’tis, mistress. CHRIS. Why, look you, Susan, you’ll have to take and hide yourself if you don’t want for them to know as you be got along of we. SUSAN. What’s that, Chris?