The Heart's Highway by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
page 59 of 244 (24%)
page 59 of 244 (24%)
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I finally.
Sir Humphrey stammered and looked at me, and looked away again. Then suddenly spake Mistress Mary from her window overhead, set in a climbing trumpet-vine, and so loudly and recklessly that had not her grandmother and sister been on the farther side of the house they must have heard her. "'Tis not Sir Humphrey included the maid in the plot, but the maid who included Sir Humphrey," said she. Then she laughed, and at the same moment a mock-bird trilled in a tree. "Why do you not tell Master Wingfield that the maid, and not you nor Cousin Ralph, is the prime mover in this mystery of the cargo of furbelows on the Golden Horn?" said she, and laughed again. "I shield not myself behind a maiden's skirts," said Sir Humphrey, grimly. "Then," cried Mary, "will I tell thee, Master Wingfield, what it means. He cannot betray us, Humphrey, for his tongue is tied with honour, even if he be not on our side. But he is on our side, as is every true Englishman." Then Mary Cavendish leaned far out the window, and a white lace scarf she wore floated forth, and she cried with a great burst of triumph and childish enthusiasm: "I will tell thee what it means, Master Wingfield, I will tell thee what it means; I am but a maid, but the footsteps of General Bacon be yet plain enough to follow in this soil of Virginia, and--and--the king gets not our tobacco crops!" |
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