and they resembled even less in mind than they did in body.
When Lady Patience waxed wroth, her cheeks burned like two coals, and
thou couldst hear her little teeth grinding together, like pebbles
squeezed i' th' palm o' thy hand; but when Mistress Marian was
an-angered, the blood rushed back to her heart, and she was whiter than
a lamb at the shearing, and her lips like white threads. Then would the
light shoot and spin in her eyes, and her nostrils suck in and out, like
those of a fretful horse. And she was fierce after the manner of a man
rather than of a maid. Moreo'er, she was full a year younger than the
Lady Patience; but she looked it not; rather did her ladyship look full
two years younger than Mistress Marian. And I loved them both, and tried
as a Christian not to prefer one before the other; but what with my
lady's stealings of her arms about my neck as I sat at my stitchery, and
popping of comfits in my pocket when I would be otherwise engaged, and
teasings, and ticklings, and sundry other pretty witcheries which I do
not at this day recall, I was fairly cozened into loving her the best.
(Honey, I charge thee hold my fan betwixt thee and the fire.) But to
continue.--Mistress Marian was aye courteous and kindly to me as heart
could wish, and every night did she thank me i' th' prettiest fashion,
when I had combed and unpinned her for the night; but, Lord! I had much
ado to get Lady Patience combed or unpinned at all! First would she jump
with both knees upon mine, and hug my very breath away; then, when I had
at last coaxed her to get down, first she would perch on one leg and
then o' the other, and then be a-twisting her head now over this
shoulder, now over that, to see how I came on with the unpinning, that
it was with a prayer to God that I finally set her night-gown over her
shoulders, and led her to bed. As for her prayers--Jesu aid me and
pardon her!--'twas a matter of hours to get her to say "Our Father"
straight through, what with her vowing that she wished not bread every
day, and how that if his lordship her father forgave not trespassers
(for I could ne'er draw the difference between trespass_es_ and
trespass_ers_ into her pretty pate), neither would she; and how she did
not believe God would lead her into temptation at any time, but that it
was the Devil; and how it must anger God even to think of such doings on
His part--what, I say, with all this, methought sometimes it would be
cock-crow ere I g