said Amphillis.

"In good sooth, I see not how it may be," resumed Agatha. "He has never
a penny to his patrimony. I heard him to say once to Master Godfrey
that all he had of his father was horse, and arms, and raiment. Nor
hath he any childless old uncle, or such, that might take to him, and
make his fortune. He lives of his wits, belike. Now, I am an only
daughter, and have never a brother to come betwixt me and the
inheritance; I shall have a pretty penny when my father dies. So I have
some right to be jolly. Ay, and jolly I'll be when I am mine own
mistress, I warrant you! I've no mother, so there is none to oversee
me, and rule me, and pluck me by the sleeve when I would go hither and
thither, so soon as I can be quit of my Lady yonder. Oh, there's a
jolly life afore _me_."

It was Amphillis's turn to be astonished.

"Dear heart!" she said. "Why, I have no kindred nearer than uncle and
cousins, but I have ever reckoned it a sore trouble to lose my mother,
and no blessing."

"Very like it was to you!" said Agatha. "You'd make no bones if you
were ruled like an antiphonarium [music-book for anthems and chants],
I'll be bound, I'm none so fond of being driven in harness. I love my
own way, and I'll have it, too, one of these days."

"But then you have none to love you! That is one of the worst sorrows
in the world, I take it."

"Love! bless you, I shall have lovers enough! I've three hundred a year
to my fortune."

Three hundred pounds in 1372 was equal to nearly five thousand now.

"But what good should it do you that people wanted your money?" asked
Amphillis. "That isn't loving _you_."

"Amphillis, I do believe you were born a hundred years old! or else in
some other world, where their notions are quite diverse from this," said
Agatha, taking a candied orange from the sewer. "I never heard such
things as you say."

"But lovers who only want your money seem to me very unsatisfying
folks," replied Amphillis. "Will they smooth your pillows when you are
sick? or comfort you when your heart is woeful?"

"I don't mean my heart to be woeful, and as to pillows, there be
thousands will smooth them for wages."

"They are smoother when 'tis done for love," was the answer.

Agatha devoted herself to her orange, and in a few minutes Lady Foljambe
gave the signal to rise from table. The young ladies followed her to
her private sitting-room, where Agatha received a stern reprimand for
the crim