Martin: Thank you. Will you, because I have answered many questions,
now answer one?

Joan: Yes.

Martin: Then tell me this--what is your quarrel with men?

Joan: Oh, Master Pippin! they say that one and one make two.

Martin: Is this possible? Good heavens, are men such numskulls! When
they have but to go to the littlest woman on earth to learn--what you
and I well know--that one and one make one, and sometimes three, or
four, or even half-a-dozen; but never two. Fie upon these men!

Joan: I am glad you think I am in the right. But how obstinate they are!

Martin: As obstinate as children, and should be birched as roundly.

Joan: Oh! but-- You would not birch children.

Martin: You are right again. They should be coaxed.

Joan: Yes. No. I mean-- Good night, dear singer.

Martin: Good night, dear milkmaid. Sleep sweetly among your comrades
who are wiser than we, being so indifferent to happy endings that they
would never unpadlock sorrow, though they had the key in their keeping.

Then he took her hands in one of his, and put his other hand very
gently under her chin, and lifted it till he could look into her face,
and he said: "Give me the key to Gillian's prison, little Joan, because
you love happy endings."

Joan: Dear Martin, I cannot give you the key.

Martin: Why not?

Joan: Because I stuck it inside your apple.

So he kissed her and they parted, and lay down and slept; she among her
comrades under the apple-tree, and he under the briony in the hedge;
and the moon came out of her dream and watched theirs.

With morning came a hoarse voice calling along the hedge:

"Maids! maids! maids!"

Up sprang the milkmaids, rubbing their eyes and stretching their arms;
and up sprang Martin likewise. And seeing him, Joscelyn was stricken
with dismay.

"It is Old Gillman, our master," she whispered, "come with bread and
questions. Quick, singer, quick! into the hollow russet before he
reaches the hole in the hedge."

Swiftly the milkmaids hustled Martin into the russet tree, and
concealed him at the very moment when the Farmer was come to the
peephole, filling it with his round red face and broad gray fringe of
whiskers, like the winter sun on a sky that is going to snow.

"Good morrow, maids," quoth old Gillman.

"Good morrow, master," said they.

"Is my daughter come to her mind yet?"

"No, master," said little Joan, "but I begin to have hopes that she
may."

"If she do not," groane