Chapter Three.

At Uncle Dan’s Smithy.

The royal baby for whose benefit Muriel and Agnes had been engaged did not live long; but he was succeeded by his brother Prince William, and before he was old enough to do without nurses, a little Princess came upon the scene. She was the last of the family, and she lived three years and a half. After her death, the services of the nurses were no longer needed. Queen Eleanor dismissed them with liberal wages and handsome presents, and the two who were left—Agnes and Avice—determined to go back to Lincoln. Avice was now a young woman of twenty.

But when they reached their old home, they found many changes. The good Bishop Grosteste was gone, but his chaplain, Father Thomas, had looked after their interests, and Agnes found no difficulty in recovering her little property. Happily for them, their tenants were anxious to leave the house, and before many days were over, they had slipped quietly back into the old place.

There were no banks in those days. A man’s savings bank was an old stocking or a tin mug. Agnes disposed of the money she had left from the Queen’s payment, partly in the purchase of a cow, and partly in a stocking, which was carefully locked up in the oak chest. They could live very comfortably on the produce of the cow and the garden, aided by what small sums they might earn in one way and another. And so the years went on, until Avice in her turn married and was left a widow; but she had no child, and when her mother died Avice was left alone.

“I can never do to live alone,” she said to herself; “I must have somebody to love and work for.”

And she began to think whom she could find to live with her. As she sat and span in the twilight, one name after another occurred to her mind, but only to be all declined with thanks.

There was her neighbour next door, Annora Goldhue: she had three daughters. No, none of them would do. Joan was idle, and Amy was conceited, and Frethesancia had a temper. Little Roese might have done, who lived with old Serena at the mill end; but old Serena could not spare her. At last, as Avice broke her thread for the fourth time, she pushed back the stool on which she was sitting, and rose with her determination taken, and spoke it out—

“I will go and see Aunt Filomena.”

Aunt Filomena lived about a mile from Lincoln, on the Newport road. Her husband was a greensmith: that is to say, he worked in copper, and hawked his goods in the town when made. Avice lost no time in going, but set out at once.

As she rounded the last turn in the lane, she heard the ring of Daniel Greensmith’s hammer on the anvil, and a few minutes’ more walking brought her in sight of the smith himself, who laid down his hammer and shaded his eyes to see who was coming.

“Why, Uncle Dan, don’t you know me?” said Avice.

“Nay, who is to know thee, when thou comes so seldom?” said old Dan, wiping his hot face with his apron. “Art thou come to see me or my dame?”

“I want to see Aunt Filomena. Is she in, Uncle Dan?”

“She’s in, unless she’s out,” said Dan unanswerably. “And her tongue’s in, too. It’s at home, that is. Was this morning, anyhow. What dost thou want of her?”

“Well,” said Avice, hesitating, “I want her advice—”

“Then thou wants what thou’lt get plenty of,” said Dan, with a comical twist of his mouth, as he turned over some long nails to find a suitable one. “I’ll be fain if thou’lt cart away a middling lot, for there’s more coming my way than I’ve occasion for at this present.”

Avice laughed. “I daresay Aunt is overworked a bit,” she said. “Perhaps I can help her, Uncle Dan. Folks are apt to lose their tempers when they are tired.”

“Some folks are apt to lose ’em whether they are tired or not,” said the smith, with a shake of his grizzled head. “I’ve got six lasses, and four on ’em takes after her. I could manage one, and maybe I might tackle two; but when five on ’em gets a-top of a chap, why, he’s down afore he knows it. I’m a peaceable man enough if they’d take me peaceable. But them five rattling tongues, that gallops faster than Sir Otho’s charger up to the Manor—eh, I tell thee what, Avice, they do wear a man out!”

“Poor Uncle Dan! I should think they do. But are all the girls at home? I thought Mildred and Emma were to be bound apprentices in Lincoln.”

“Fell through wi’ Mildred,” said the smith. “Didn’t offer good enough; and She”—by which pronoun he usually designated his vixenish wife—“wouldn’t hear on it. Emma’s bound, worse luck! I could ha’ done wi’ Emma. She and Bertha’s the only ones as can be peaceable, like me.”

“Mildred’s still at home, then?”

“Mildred’s at home yet. And so’s El’nor, and so’s Susanna, and so’s Ankaret; and every one on ’em’s tongue’s worse nor t’other. And”—a very heavy sigh—“so’s She!”

Avice knew that Uncle Dan was usually a man of fewer words than this. For him to be thus loquacious showed very strong emotion or irritation of some sort. She went round to the back door, and before she reached it, she heard enough to let her guess the sort of welcome she might expect to receive.

Just inside the open door stood Aunt Filomena, a thin, red-faced, voluble woman, with her arms akimbo, pouring out words as fast as they could come; and in the yard, just outside the door, opposite to her, stood her daughter Ankaret, in exactly the same attitude, also thin, red-faced, and voluble. The two were such precise counterparts of one another that Avice had hard work to keep her gravity. Inside the house, Susanna and Mildred, and outside Eleanor, were acting as interested spectators; the funniest part of the scene being that neither of them listened to a word said by the other, but each ran at express speed on her own rails. The youngest daughter, Bertha, was nowhere to be seen.

For a minute the whole appearance of things struck Avice as so excessively comical that she could scarcely help laughing. But then she realised how shocking it really was. What sort of mothers, in their turn, could such daughters be expected to make? She waited for a moment’s pause, and when it occurred, which was not for some minutes, she said—

“Aunt Filomena!”

“Oh, you’re there, are you?” demanded the amiable Filomena. “You just thank the stars you’ve got no children! If ever an honest woman were plagued with six good-for-nothing, sluttish, slatternly shrews of girls as me! Here’s that Ankaret—I’ve told her ten times o’er to wash the tubs out, and get ’em ready for the pickling, and I come to see if they are done, and they’ve never been touched, and my lady sitting upstairs a-making her gown fine for Sunday! I declare, I’ll—”

Her intentions were drowned in an equally shrill scream from Miss Ankaret. “You never told me a word—not once! And ’tain’t my place to scour them tubs out, neither. It’s Susanna as always—”

“Then I won’t!” broke in Susanna. “And you might be ashamed of yourself, I should think, to put such messy work on me when Eleanor—”

“You’d best let me alone!” fiercely chimed in Eleanor.

“Oh dear, dear!” cried Avice, putting her hands over her ears. “My dear cousins, are you going to drive each other deaf? Why, I would rather scour out twenty tubs than fight over them like this! Are you not Christian women? Come, now, who is going to scour the tubs? I will take one myself if you will do the others. Who will join me?”

And Avice began to turn up her sleeves in good earnest. “No, Avice, don’t you; you’ll spoil your gown,” said Eleanor, looking ashamed of her vehemence. “See, I’ll get them done. Mildred, won’t you help?”

“Well, I don’t mind if I do,”