ke.

And now, if you please, Mistress Joan, I have earned my apple.

FIRST INTERLUDE

Now there was a great munching of apples in the tree, for to tell the
truth during the latter part of the story this business had been
suspended, and between bites the milkmaids discussed the merits of what
they had just heard.

Jessica: What is your opinion of this tale, Jane?

Jane: It surprised me more than anything. For who could have suspected
that the Lad was a Woman?

Martin: Lads are to be suspected of any mischief, Mistress Jane.

Joscelyn: It is not to be supposed, Master Pippin, that we are
acquainted with the habits of lads.

Martin: I suppose nothing. But did the story please you?

Joscelyn: As a story it was well enough to pass an hour. I would be
willing to learn whether the King regained his kingdom or no.

Martin: I think he did, since you may go to this day to the little city
on the banks of the Adur which is re-named after his Barn. But I doubt
whether he lived there, or anywhere but in the Barn where he and his
beloved began their life of work and prayer and mirth and loving-rule.
And died as happily as they had lived.

Joan: I am glad they lived happily. I was afraid the tale would end
unhappily.

Joyce: And so was I. For when the King roamed the hills for a whole
week without success, I began to fear he would never find the Woman
again.

Jennifer: I for my part feared lest he should not open his lips during
the fourth vigil, and so must become a Dove for the remainder of his
days.

Jane: It was but by the grace of a moment he did not drown himself in
the Pond.

Jessica: Or what if, by some unlucky chance, he had never come to the
forge at all?

Martin: In any of these events, I grant you, the tale must have ended
in disaster. And this is the special wonder of love-tales: that though
they may end unhappily in a thousand ways, and happily in only one, yet
that one will vanquish the thousand as often as the desires of lovers
run in tandem. But there is one accident you have left out of count,
and it is the worst stumbling-block I know of in the path of happy
endings.

All the Milkmaids: What is it?

Martin: Suppose the lovely Viola had been a sworn virgin and a hater of
men.

There was silence in the Apple-Orchard.

Joscelyn: She would have been none the worse for that, singer. And the
tale would have been none the less a tale, which is all we look for
from you. This talk of happy