"No matter," said Judith, carelessly. "Well, I have heard that when they make a journey to London they are as fond of claret wine and oysters as any; but no matter: in truth the winds carry many a thing not worth the listening to. But as regards this special wickedness, sweet mouse, indeed you are innocent of it; 'tis all laid to my charge; I am the sinner and temptress; be sure you shall not suffer one jot through my iniquity. And now have you got them all together? Are you ready to begin?"

"But you must tell me where the story ceased, dear Judith, when last we had it; for indeed you have a marvellous memory, even to the word and the letter. The poor babe that was abandoned on the sea-sh.o.r.e had just been found by the old shepherd--went it not so?--and he was wondering at the rich bearing-cloth it was wrapped in. Why, here is the name--Perdita," she continued, as she rapidly scanned one or two of the papers--"who is now grown up, it appears, and in much grace; and this is a kind of introduction, I take it, to tell you all that has happened since your father last went to London--I mean since the story was broken off. And Florizel--I remember not the name--but here he is so named as the son of the King of Bohemia----"

A quick laugh of intelligence rose to Judith's eyes; she had an alert brain.

"Prince Florizel?" she exclaimed. "And Princess Perdita! That were a fair match, in good sooth, and a way to heal old differences. But to the beginning, sweetheart, I beseech you; let us hear how the story is to be; and pray Heaven he gives me back my little Mamillius, that was so petted and teased by the court ladies."

However, as speedily appeared, she had antic.i.p.ated too easy a continuation and conclusion. The young Prince Florizel proved to be enamored, not of one of his own station, but of a simple shepherdess; and although she instantly guessed that this shepherdess might turn out to be the forsaken Perdita, the conversation between King Polixenes and the good Camillo still left her in doubt. As for the next scene--the encounter between Autolycus and the country clown--Judith wholly and somewhat sulkily disapproved of that. She laughed, it is true; but it was sorely against her will. For she suspected that goodman Matthew's influence was too apparent here; and that, were he ever to hear of the story, he would in his vanity claim this part as his own; moreover, there was a kind of familiarity and every-day feeling in the atmosphere--why, she herself had been rapidly questioned by her father about the necessary purchases for a sheep-shearing feast, and Susan, laughing, had struck in with the information as to the saffron for coloring the warden-pies. But when the sweet-voiced Prudence came to the scene between Prince Florizel and the pretty shepherdess, then Judith was right well content.

"Oh, do you see, now, how her gentle birth shines through her lowly condition!" she said, quickly. "And when the old shepherd finds that he has been ordering a king's daughter to be the mistress of the feast--ay, and soundly rating her, too, for her bashful ways--what a fright will seize the good old man! And what says she in answer?--again, good Prue--let me hear it again--marry, now, I'll be sworn she had just such another voice as yours!"

"To the King Polixenes," Prudence continued, regarding the ma.n.u.script, "who is in disguise, you know, Judith, she says:

'Welcome, sir!

It is my father's will I should take on me The hostess-ship o' the day:--you're welcome, sir.'

And then to both the gentlemen:

'Give me those flowers there, Dorcas.--Reverend sirs, For you there's rosemary and rue; these keep Seeming and savor all the winter long: Grace and remembrance be to you both, And welcome to our shearing!'"

"Ah, there, now, will they not be won by her gentleness?" she cried, eagerly. "Will they not suspect and discover the truth? It were a new thing for a prince to wed a shepherdess, but this is no shepherdess, as an owl might see! What say they then, Prue? Have they no suspicion?"

So Prudence continued her patient reading--in the intense silence that was broken only by the twittering of the birds in the orchard, or the crowing of a c.o.c.k in some neighboring yard; and Judith listened keenly, drinking in every varying phrase. But when Florizel had addressed his speech to the pretty hostess of the day, Judith could no longer forbear: she clapped her hands in delight.

"There, now, that is a true lover; that is spoken like a true lover,"

she cried, with her face radiant and proud. "Again, good Prue--let us hear what he says--ay, and before them all, too, I warrant me he is not ashamed of her."

So Prudence had to read once more Florizel's praise of his gentle mistress:

"'What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, I'd have you do it ever: when you sing, I'd have you buy and sell so; so give alms; Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own No other function. Each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, That all your acts are queens!'"

"In good sooth, it is spoken like a true lover," Judith said, with a light on her face as if the speech had been addressed to herself. "Like one that is well content with his sweetheart, and is proud of her, and approves! Marry, there be few of such in these days; for this one is jealous and unreasonable, and would have the mastery too soon; and that one would frighten you to his will by declaring you are on the highway to perdition; and another would have you more civil to his tribe of kinsfolk. But there is a true lover, now; there is one that is courteous and gentle; one that is not afraid to approve: there may be such in Stratford, but G.o.d wot, they would seem to be a scarce commodity! Nay, I pray your pardon, good Prue: to the story, if it please you--and is there aught of the little Mamillius forthcoming?"

And so the reading proceeded; and Judith was in much delight that the old King seemed to perceive something unusual in the grace and carriage of the pretty Perdita.

"What is't he says? What are the very words?"

"'This is the prettiest low-born la.s.s that ever Ran on the greensward: nothing she does or seems But smacks of something greater than herself; Too n.o.ble for this place.'"

"Yes! yes! yes!" she exclaimed, quickly. "And sees he not some likeness to the Queen Hermione? Surely he must remember the poor injured Queen, and see that this is her daughter? Happy daughter, that has a lover that thinks so well of her! And now, Prue?"

But when in the course of the hushed reading all these fair hopes came to be cruelly shattered; when the pastoral romance was brought to a sudden end; when the King, disclosing himself, declared a divorce between the unhappy lovers, and was for hanging the ancient shepherd, and would have Perdita's beauty scratched with briers; and when Prudence had to repeat the farewell words addressed to the prince by his hapless sweetheart--

"'Wilt please you, sir, be gone?

I told you what would come of this. Beseech you, Of your own state take care: this dream of mine-- Being now awake, I'll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes, and weep--'"

there was something very like tears in the gentle reader's eyes; but that was not Judith's mood; she was in a tempest of indignation.

"G.o.d's my life!" she cried, "was there ever such a fool as this old King? He a king! He to sit on a throne! Better if he sate in a barn and helped madge-howlet to catch mice! And what says the prince? Nay, I'll be sworn he proves himself a true man, and no summer playfellow; he will stand by her; he will hold to her, let the ancient dotard wag his beard as he please!"

And so, in the end, the story was told, and all happily settled; and Prudence rose from the rude wooden bench with a kind of wistful look on her face, as if she had been far away, and seen strange things. Then Judith--pausing for a minute or so as if she would fix the whole thing in her memory, to be thought over afterward--proceeded to tie the pages together for the better concealment of them on her way home.

"And the wickedness of it?" said she, lightly. "Wherein lies the wickedness of such a reading, sweet mouse?"

Prudence was somewhat shamefaced on such occasions; she could not honestly say that she regretted as she ought to have done, giving way to Judith's importunities.

"Some would answer you, Judith," she said, "that we had but ill used time that was given us for more serious purposes."

"And for what more serious purposes, good gossip? For the repeating of idle tales about our neighbors? Or the spending of the afternoon in sleep, as is the custom with many? Are we all so busy, then, that we may not pa.s.s a few minutes in amus.e.m.e.nt? But, indeed, sweet Prue," said she, as she gave a little touch to her pretty cap and snow-white ruff, to put them right before she went out into the street, "I mean to make amends this afternoon. I shall be busy enough to make up for whatever loss of time there has been over this dangerous and G.o.dless idleness. For, do you know, I have everything ready now for the new Portugal receipts that you read to me; and two of them I am to try as soon as I get home; and my father is to know nothing of the matter--till the dishes be on the table. So fare you well, sweet mouse; and give ye good thanks, too: this has been but an evil preparation for the church-going of the morrow, but remember, the sin was mine--you are quit of that."

And then her glance fell on the roll of papers that she held in her hand.

"The pretty Perdita!" said she. "Her beauty was not scratched with briers, after all. And I doubt not she was in brave attire at the court; though methinks I better like to remember her as the mistress of the feast, giving the flowers to this one and that. And happy Perdita, also, to have the young prince come to the sheep-shearing, and say so many sweet things to her! Is't possible, think you, Prue, there might come such another handsome stranger to our sheep-shearing that is now at hand?"

"I know not what you mean, Judith."

"Why, now, should such things happen only in Bohemia?" she said, gayly, to the gentle and puzzled Prudence, "Soon our shearing will begin, for the weather has been warm, and I hear the hurdles are already fixed. And there will be somewhat of a merry-making, no doubt; and--and the road from Evesham hither is a fair and goodly road, that a handsome young stranger might well come riding along. What then, good mouse? If one were to meet him in the lane that crosses to Shottery--and to bid him to the feast--what then?"

"Oh, Judith, surely you are not still thinking of that dangerous man!"

the other exclaimed.

But Judith merely regarded her for a second, with the clear-shining eyes now become quite demure and inscrutable.

CHAPTER XI.

A REMONSTRANCE.

Next morning was Sunday; and Judith, having got through her few domestic duties at an early hour, and being dressed in an especially pretty costume in honor of the holy day, thought she need no longer remain within-doors, but would walk along to the church-yard, where she expected to find Prudence. The latter very often went thither on a Sunday morning, partly for quiet reverie and recalling of this one and the other of her departed but not forgotten friends whose names were carven on the tombstones, and partly--if this may be forgiven her--to see how the generous mother earth had responded to her week-day labors in the planting and tending of the graves. But when Judith, idly and carelessly as was her wont, reached the church-yard, she found the wide, silent s.p.a.ce quite empty; so she concluded that Prudence had probably been detained by a visit to some one fallen sick; and she thought she might as well wait for her; and with that view--or perhaps out of mere thoughtlessness--she went along to the river-side, and sat down on the low wall there, having before her the slowly moving yellow stream and the fair, far-stretching landscape beyond.

There had been some rain during the night; the roads she had come along were miry; and here the gra.s.s in the church-yard was dripping with the wet; but there was a kind of suffused rich light abroad that bespoke the gradual breaking through of the sun; and there was a warmth in the moist atmosphere that seemed to call forth all kinds of sweet odors from the surrounding plants and flowers. Not that she needed these, for she had fixed in her bosom a little nosegay of yellow-leaved mint, that was quite sufficient to sweeten the scarcely moving air. And as she sat there in the silence it seemed to her as if all the world were awake--and had been awake for hours--but that all the human beings were gone out of it. The rooks were cawing in the elms above her; the bees hummed as they flew by into the open light over the stream; and far away she could hear the lowing of the cattle on the farms; but there was no sound of any human voice, nor any glimpse of any human creature in the wide landscape. And she grew to wonder what it would be like if she were left alone in the world, all the people gone from it, her own relatives and friends no longer here and around her, but away in the strange region where Hamnet was, and perhaps, on such a morning as this, regarding her not without pity, and even, it might be, with some touch of half-recalled affection. Which of them all should she regret the most? Which of them all would this solitary creature--left alone in Stratford, in an empty town--most crave for, and feel the want of? Well, she went over these friends and neighbors and companions and would-be lovers; and she tried to imagine what, in such circ.u.mstances, she might think of this one and that; and which of them she would most desire to have back on the earth and living with her. But right well she knew in her heart that all this balancing and choosing was but a pretence. There was but the one; the one whose briefest approval was a kind of heaven to her, and the object of her secret and constant desire; the one who turned aside her affection with a jest; who brought her silks and scents from London as if her mind were set on no other things than these. And she was beginning to wonder whether, in those imagined circ.u.mstances, he might come to think differently of her and to understand her somewhat; and indeed she was already picturing to herself the life they might lead--these two, father and daughter, together in the empty and silent but sun-lit and sufficiently cheerful town--when her idle reverie was interrupted. There was a sound of talking behind her; doubtless the first of the people were now coming to church; for the doors were already open.

She looked round, and saw that this was Master Walter Blaise who had just come through the little swinging gate, and that he was accompanied by two little girls, one at each side of him, and holding his hand.

Instantly she turned her head away, pretending not to have seen him.

"Bless the man!" she said to herself, "what does he here of a Sunday morning? Why is so diligent a pastor not in charge of his own flock?"

But she felt secure enough. Not only was he accompanied by the two children, but there was this other safeguard that he would not dare to profane the holy day by attempting anything in the way of wooing. And it must be said that the young parson had had but few opportunities for that, the other members of the household eagerly seeking his society when he came to New Place, and Judith sharp to watch her chances of escape.

The next moment she was startled by hearing a quick footstep behind her.

She did not move.

"Give you good-morrow, Judith," said he, presenting himself, and regarding her with his keen and confident gray eyes. "I would crave a word with you; and I trust it may be a word in season, and acceptable to you."

He spoke with an air of cool authority, which she resented. There was nothing of the clownish bashfulness of young Jelleyman about him; nor yet of the half-timid, half-sulky jealousy of Tom Quiney; but a kind of mastery, as if his office gave him the right to speak, and commanded that she should hear. And she did not think this fair, and she distinctly wished to be alone; so that her face had but little welcome in it, and none of the shining radiance of kindness that w.i.l.l.y Hart so worshipped.