w nothing of these girls, except that somehow they had found out
her sorrows, and hated her; only she thought to herself they must be
very happy, or they would not be so hard on her.

So she took their taunts in silence; and all her struggle was not to let
them see their power to make her writhe within.

Here came in her fortitude; and she received their blows with
well-feigned, icy hauteur. They slapped a statue.

But one day, when her spirits were weak, as happens at times to females
in her condition, a dozen assailants followed suit so admirably, that
her whole sex seemed to the dispirited one to be against her, and she
lost heart, and the tears began to run silently at each fresh stab.

On this their triumph knew no bounds, and they followed her half way
home casting barbed speeches.

After that exposure of weakness the statue could be assumed no more. So
then she would stand timidly aloof out of tongue-shot, till her young
tyrants' pitchers were all filled, and they gone; and then creep up with
hers. And one day she waited so long that the fount had ceased to flow.
So the next day she was obliged to face the phalanx, or her house go
dry. She drew near slowly, but with the less tremor, that she saw a
man at the well talking to them. He would distract their attention, and
besides, they would keep their foul tongues quiet if only to blind
the male to their real character. This conjecture, though shrewd, was
erroneous. They could not all flirt with that one man; so the outsiders
indemnified themselves by talking at her the very moment she came up.

"Any news from foreign parts, Jacqueline?"

"None for me, Martha. My lad goes no farther from me than the town
wall."

"I can't say as much," says a third.

"But if he goes t' Italy I have got another ready to take the fool's
place."

"He'll not go thither, lass. They go not so far till they are sick of us
that bide in Holland."

Surprise and indignation, and the presence of a man, gave Margaret a
moment's fighting courage.

"Oh, flout me not, and show your ill nature before the very soldier. In
Heaven's name, what ill did I ever to ye? what harsh word cast back, for
all you have flung on me, a desolate stranger in your cruel town,
that ye flout me for my bereavement and my poor lad's most unwilling
banishment? Hearts of flesh would surely pity us both, for that ye cast
in my teeth these many days, ye brows of brass, ye bosoms of stone."

They stared at this