.. "Why is he
not in the hall, then, while the ethel-born is sitting at table?"... "Perhaps
his luck is beginning to fail him."... "Perhaps he has fallen out of favor."
The two old men who offered these last suggestions chuckled with malicious
enjoyment, and two of the old women mumbled with their toothless gums as
though tasting sweet morsels; but the third drew herself up with a kind of
grotesque coquetry.
"You can tell by the green silk of his tunic that he is of some quality," she
reproved them. "Danishmen are ever the ones to adorn themselves. It occurs to
my mind how, in Edgar's time, when I was a girl, one was quartered in my
father's house. He changed his raiment once a day and bathed every Sunday. I
used to comb his yellow hair when I took in his ale, of a morning." Long after
her voice had passed into a rattle, she stood in a simpering revery, her
palsied hands resting heavily upon her stick, her blinking eyes fixed on the
picturesque young foreigner musing in the sunshine.
Then the voice of the steward sounded sharply in the archway. There was an
eager catching up of bags and baskets, a shuffling forward of unsteady feet,
and the goody came out of her day-dream to throw herself into the strife over
a jar of peppered broth.
The Danish page bent to pillow a very red cheek on the soft cushion of the
dog's head, then drew back and straightened himself stiffly as a strapping
serving-lass, flagon-laden, came out of the door behind him.
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