curiosity. She was brotherless, he had no sisters, and both had been
brought up without companions, so that each was an absolute novelty to
the other; and when Gilbert threw his round cap, spinning on itself, up
to the brown rafters of the dim fire-lit chamber and caught it upon one
finger as it came down again, the little Beatrix laughed aloud. This
seemed to him nothing less than an invitation, and he immediately sat
down beside her on the settle, holding his cap in his hand, and began
to ask her how she was called, and whether she lived in that place all
the year round; and before long they were good friends, and were
talking of plovers' eggs and kingfishers' nests, and of the time when
they should each have a hawk of their own, and a horse, and each a
hound and a footman.

When supper was over and a serving-woman had taken the little Beatrix
away to sleep in the women's upper chamber, and when the steward of the
manor farm, and his wife and the retainers and servants, who had eaten
and drunk their fill at the lower end of the hall, were all gone to
their quarters in the outbuildings,--and when a bed had been made for
Gilbert, in a corner near the great chimney-piece, by filling with
fresh straw a large linen sack which was laid upon the chest in which
the bag was kept during the daytime, and was then covered with a fine
Holland sheet and two thick woollen blankets, under which the boy was
asleep in five minutes,--then the two knights and the lady were left
to themselves in their great carved chairs before the fire. But the
Lord of Stoke, who was a strong man and heavy, and had eaten well and
had drunk both ale and Gascony wine at supper, stretched out his feet
to the fire-dogs, and rested his elbows upon the arms of his chair, and
matched his hands together by the thumbs and by the forefingers, and by
the other fingers, one by one; and little by little the musical, false
voice of his lady, and the singularly gentle and unctuous tones of his