ed that the maids' dormitory at the old Duchess's had been no
cloister of pure nuns. So that, at best, she was afraid, and she sent
her yard-worker and a shepherd a great way round to fetch the larger
boat of two to ferry over the Queen's men. Then she went indoors to redd
up the houseplace and to attire herself.

To the old farmstead, that was made of wood hung over here and there
with tilework with a base of bricks, she had added a houseplace for the
old folk to sit all day. It was built of wattles that had had clay cast
over them, and was whitened on the outside and thatched nearly down to
the ground like any squatter's hut; it had cupboards of wood nearly all
round it, and beneath the cupboards were lockers worn smooth with men
sitting upon them, after the Dutch fashion--for there in Lincolnshire
they had much traffic with the Dutch. There was a great table made of
one slab of a huge oak from near Boston. Here they all ate. And above
the ingle was another slab of oak from the same tree. Her little old
step-mother sat in a stuff chair covered with a sheep-skin; she sat
there night and day, shivering with the shaking palsy. At times she let
out of her an eldritch shriek, very like the call of a hedgehog; but she
never spoke, and she was fed with a spoon by a little misbegotten son of
Edward Hall's. The old step-father sat always opposite her; he had no
use of his legs, and his head was always stiffly screwed round towards
the door as if he were peering, but that was the rheumatism. To atone
for his wife's dumbness, he chattered incessantly whenever anyone was on
that floor; but because he spoke always in Lincolnshire, Mary Hall could
scarce understand him, and indeed she had long ceased to listen. He
spoke of forgotten floods and ploughings, ancient fairs, the boundaries
of fields long since flooded over, of a visit to Boston that King Edward
IV had made, and of how he, for his fair speech and old lineage, had
been chosen of all the Radigund's men to present into the King's hands
three silver horseshoes. Behind his back was a great dresser with railed
shelves, having upon them a little pewter ware and many wooden bowls for
the hinds' feeding. A door on the right side, painted black, went down
into the cellar beneath the old house. Another door, of bars of iron
with huge locks from the old monastery, went into the old house where
slept the maids and the hinds. This was always open by day but locked in
the dark hours. Fo