snow; but some naughty man has beaten it black. Oh, leetle boy, let me
feel it. Ah, how then it must have hurt you! There now, and you shall
love me.'

All this time she was touching my breast, here and there, very lightly,
with her delicate brown fingers, and I understood from her voice and
manner that she was not of this country, but a foreigner by extraction.
And then I was not so shy of her, because I could talk better English
than she; and yet I longed for my jerkin, but liked not to be rude to
her.

'If you please, madam, I must go. John Fry is waiting by the tapster's
door, and Peggy neighing to me. If you please, we must get home
to-night; and father will be waiting for me this side of the
telling-house.'

'There, there, you shall go, leetle dear, and perhaps I will go after
you. I have taken much love of you. But the baroness is hard to me. How
far you call it now to the bank of the sea at Wash--Wash--'

'At Watchett, likely you mean, madam. Oh, a very long way, and the roads
as soft as the road to Oare.'

'Oh-ah, oh-ah--I shall remember; that is the place where my leetle boy
live, and some day I will come seek for him. Now make the pump to flow,
my dear, and give me the good water. The baroness will not touch unless
a nebule be formed outside the glass.'

I did not know what she meant by that; yet I pumped for her very
heartily, and marvelled to see her for fifty times throw the water away