“Alack! alack! ‘Tis a knight and his following. Pestilence seize them! What seek they here? Certes some Lord of the Court,--and to see me in this plight--with darned hose! Bar the shutters! Say the knight and lady are at court--at their castle in the north--in-Flanders. Plague on them! Would I were dead!” The hind moved to depart, scratching his head, with a confused notion as to his general orders. “Stay, good fellow,” the lady Alice said, rising from her seat. She was a comely English matron, well grown, with blue eyes and golden hair,--yet fair to look on; though with a face harder in expression than it doubtless had once been, for she had been sorely tried in her married lifetime. “Shame on you, Sir Gilbert Falstaff, to teach your hinds such base artifices! How can you hope they will serve you truly? Bid them welcome, Jankin, to such poor cheer as we can give them. Why, man! there is not an inn within eight leagues.” “Jankin, go not. Art thou mad, woman? Art thou mad? Thou with nothing but a cloth kirtle, and I in this miserable----But thou go to! Thou art a true trader’s daughter.” “Even so. One of those whose office it is to keep poor knights from starving.” (It was a fault of this good dame’s, that she would be bitter in her speech at times.) “I will not send these away an hungered. Come, maidens, away with the hose-baskets, and busily with me to the kitchen.” Lady Alice, followed by her two little maidens, left the room. The sound of the horses’ feet approached rapidly. There was no time to be lost. Sir Gilbert clutched Jankin nervously by the arm, and said to him in hurried tones,-- “Take thou brown Crecy; thou wilt find her in the orchard (if she be not loose in the wheat); saddle and gallop like wind to Sir Simon Ballard’s. Bid him lend me his new green velvet surcoat,--that with the gold stars. Dost heed? Say a nobleman of the court is with me, who desires one like it. Then to Dame Adlyn, the yeoman’s wife. Say I have a wager with a certain earl, who lies here, that the weight of her gold chain is greater than his. Bid her lend it me for an hour. Spare not whip or spur, and I will owe thee a guerdon. Stay!--if these riders question thee, say the knight is gone out with his hawks. Speed!” Jankin departed with a beaming face. He had no great faith in the promised guerdon, but he was fond of horse exercise. The cavalcade was at the gate. “A murrain on them!” Sir Gilbert muttered. “Would they were in the Red Sea! And yet I lack court news sorely. Pray Heaven that miser Ballard, and that farmer’s jade, Adlyn, stand me in good stead.” Sir Gilbert having impressed upon the household the fiction he was desirous of keeping up, retired to bite his nails in a garret, till such time as Jankin should return with the borrowed plumes.