Page:A C Doyle - The White Company.djvu/160

132 'What is it, lady?'

'Oh, most ungallant clerk! A true knight would never have asked, but would have vowed upon the instant. 'Tis but to bear me out in what I say to my father.'

'In what?'

'In saying, if he ask, that it was south of the Christchurch road that I met you. I shall be shut up with the tire-women else, and have a week of spindle and bodkin, when I would fain be galloping Troubadour up Wilverley Walk, or loosing little Roland at the Vinney Ridge herons.'

'I shall not answer him if he ask.'

'Not answer! But he will have an answer. Nay, but you must not fail me, or it will go ill with me.'

'But, lady,' cried poor Alleyne in great distress, 'how can I say that it was to the south of the road when I know well that it was four miles to the north?' 'You will not say it?'

'Surely, you will not, too, when you know that it is not so?'

'Oh, I weary of your preaching!' she cried, and swept away with a toss of her beautiful head, leaving Alleyne as cast down and ashamed as though he had himself proposed some infamous thing. She was back again in an instant, however, in another of her varying moods.

'Look at that, my friend!' said she. 'If you had been shut up in abbey or in cell this day you could not have taught a wayward maiden to abide by the truth. Is it not so? What avail is the shepherd if he leave his sheep?'

'A sorry shepherd!' said Alleyne humbly. 'But here is your noble father.'

'And you shall see how worthy a pupil I am. Father, I am much beholden to this young clerk, who was of service to me and helped me this very morning in Minstead Woods, four miles to the north of the Christchurch road, where I had no call to be, you having ordered it otherwise.' All this she reeled off in a loud voice, and then glanced with sidelong questioning eyes at Alleyne for his approval.