re heartily than ever.

"What is this, mademoiselle?" cried the waggoner. "Do you want to hurt
me? I swear that if I were near you I would take my revenge at once."

"What would you do?" said she.

"If I were up there I would show you," he replied.

"You would do miracles--to hear you talk; but you would never dare to
come."

"No?" said he. "You shall see."

He jumped out of the vehicle, entered the house, and ran upstairs, where
he found the damsel in her petticoat, and as happy as she could be.
He at once began to assail her, and--to cut matters short--she was not
sorry to let him take what she could not in honour have given him.

At the end of the appointed time she brought forth a fine little
waggoner. The matter was not so secret but what the knight of Hainault
heard of it, and was much surprised.

He wrote in haste, and sent the letter by a messenger to his friend in
Flanders, to say that his mistress had had a child with the help of a
waggoner.

You may guess that the other was much surprised at the news, and he
quickly came to Hainault to his friend, and begged of him to come and
see his mistress and upbraid her with her misdeeds.

Although she was keeping herself concealed at the time, the two knights
found means to come to her. She was much ashamed and vexed to see them,
as she well knew she would hear nothing pleasant from them, but she
plucked up her courage, and put on the best countenance she could.

They began by talking of various matters; and then the good knight of
Flanders began his tirade, and called her all the names he could think
of.

"You are," he said, "the most shameful and depraved woman in the world,
and you have shown the wickedness of your heart by abandoning yourself
to a low villain of a waggoner; although many noble persons offered you
their services and you refused them all. For my own part, you know what
I did to gain your love, and was I not more deserving of reward than a
rascally waggoner who never did anything for you?"

"I beg of you, monsieur," she replied, "to say no more about it--what
is done cannot be undone--but I tell you plainly that if you had come at
the moment when the waggoner did, that I would have done for you what I
did for him."

"Is that so?" he said. "By St. John! he came at a lucky moment! Devil
take it! why was I not so fortunate as to know the right time to come."

"Truly," she said, "he came just at the moment when he ought to have
come."