other the napkin whereon she went about to dry it. "Well, no
business of mine, trow."

I could not help to cry, "_Ha, chetife_!"

Dame Isabel made answer to neither the one nor the other, but marched
forth of the door with her nose an inch higher than she came in. She
was appointed to the pallet for that night, so we three lay all in our
chamber.

"This passeth!" saith Dame Elizabeth, drying of her fingers, calm
enough, on the napkin.

"Even as I looked for," saith Dame Joan, but her voice was not so calm.
There was in it a note of grief [a tone of indignation].

"_I_ ne'er trouble me to look for nought," quoth Dame Elizabeth. "What
good, trow? Better to leave folks come and go, as they list, so long as
they let [hinder] you not to come and go likewise."

"I knew not you were one of Cain's following, Dame Bess."

"Cain's following!" saith she, drawing off her fillet. "Who was Cain,
trow? Wala wa! but if my fillet be not all tarnished o' this side. I
would things would go right!"

"So would I, and so did not Cain," Dame Joan makes answer. "Who was he,
quotha? Why, he that slew his brother Abel."

"Oh, some of those old Scripture matters? I wis nought o' those folks.
But what so? I have not slain my brother, nor my sister neither."

"It looks as though your brother and your sister too might go astray and
be lost ere you should soil your fingers and strain your arms a-pulling
them forth."

"Gramercy! Every man for himself!" saith Dame Elizabeth, a-pulling off
her hood. "Now, here's a string come off! Alway my luck! If a body
might but bide in peace--"

"And never have no troubles, nor strings come off, nor buttons broke,
nor stitches come loose--" adds Dame Joan, a-laughing.

"Right so--man might have a bit of piece of man's life, then. Why, look
you, the string is all chafen, that it is not worth setting on anew; and
so much as a yard of red ribbon have I not. I must needs don my hood of
green of Louvaine."

She said it in a voice which might have gone with the direst calamity
that could befall.

"Dame Elizabeth de Mohun, you be a full happy woman!"

"What will the woman say next?"

"That somewhat hangeth on what you may next say."

"Well, what I next say is that I am full ill-used to have in one hour a
tarnished fillet and a broken string, and--Saint Lucy love us! here be
two of my buttons gone!"

I could thole no longer, and forth brake I in laughter. Dame Joan
joined with me,