Page:Tales from Chaucer.djvu/253

 all the while the tears streamed over their hair and faces.—Oh! it was an affecting thing to have seen her helpless insensibility, and then to hear again her meek and cordial voice!

' Gramercy, my good Lord and husband! may God repay thee with thanks, that thou hast spared to me our dear children. Seeing that I thus stand in thy gracious favour, I feel that I could joyfully give up my life; and if it be God's will, never at a more blissful season than when I know that they, for whom I sorrowed, have been saved from an early grave.

'Oh my dear young children; your woful mother had no other thought than that you had been left a prey to some foul vermin'—and with those words her senses failed again; yet, all the while, she held them so closely in her embrace, that they were separated only by force: while those who stood around wept many a tear for pity. At length the voice of her husband and the subsiding of her sorrow restored her, and she arose, abashed at having exposed the feebleness of her nature. All