"How can I go back?" she said, hopelessly. "They saw me crying, and they would sit and look at me all the time like like " (and Kate paused while she searched the universe for a comparison to express the most utter and abject stupidity) "well, just like men."
Yet she sighed and turned her face a little more inward towards Maisie's shoulder. "No, decidedly," she said, as if after all she had been considering the question; "I cannot go back."
Maisie loosened her arms from about Kate's neck. "Then you shall not, sweeting," she said, with determination, as if a coercive army had been at hand; "lie you still there and I will get them away. Trust me, they shall know no more than it is good for men to know."
And she nodded her head to express the limited capacity of mankind, and the absolute necessity that there was for the wiser portion of the race to maintain them in a condition of strictly defined and diplomatic ignorance.
Before she went out of the bedroom Maisie set by the girl's side a small bottle of the sweet-scented water of Cologne, one which Wat himself had brought back from his last campaign. "He carried that nearly a year in his haversack," Maisie said, irrelevantly, as she set the vial within reach of Kate's hand. "I will go send him to take a bath. He must have ridden both hard and fast to be back from Brederode by six o'clock in the morning."
"You will not tell them," whispered the girl, faintly, catching at Maisie's hand as she went out, "nor let him think that I am foolish?"
"Trust to me," said Maisie Lennox, nodding her head and smiling serenely back as she went out.
In the sitting-chamber she found the two young men still at the table talking together. They stopped with badly assumed masculine ease as she entered. Since Will's rebuff at the chamber door they had sat conversing in perfunctory and uncomfortable sentences, their ears directed towards the door like those of a dog that hears an unkenned foot on the stair, their attention anywhere but upon the subject concerning which they were speaking.
Maisie began at once in the hushed and important tone of the messenger fresh from the seat of war. "Kate could not sleep last night for the noise of the wooden sabots upon the street outside. She has had a headache all this morning, and I ought not to have let her listen to Wat's tale of horrors "
"I trust I did not " Wat began,
suddenly conscience-stricken.
"No, no," said Maisie, motioning him to sit down, "it was all my fault, not yours at all I should have bethought me in time. She will be quite well after she has slept. Be sure you remember to walk quietly with your great boots," she added, looking viciously at her husband.
At this hint Wat rose to go. In doing so he accidentally pushed his stiff wooden chair back from the table with a loud creak, and then abjectly recoiled from Maisie's face of absolute horror.
He sat down again disconsolately. Will Gordon and he cast a pathetic look at each other. Their place was obviously not here. So one after the other they bent and pulled off their heavy foot-gear, while Maisie watched them with uplifted finger of the most solemnizing caution. Then very softly the two men stole down the stairs, carrying their boots in their hands.
Maisie listened till they were fairly out of the house. Then she went directly to Kate's door. She opened it and set her head within. There was an expression of almost heavenly peace and serenity upon her face. The consciousness of infinite well-doing dwelt upon it.
"It is all right!" she said, "they will never so much as guess why. They went out like lambs carrying their boots under their arms!" And again Maisie nodded her head with smiling encouragement.
And yet diplomatists are usually selected from among men.
CHAPTER VIII THE STREET OF THE BUTCHERY
The sun shone on her face and touched lovingly the small straying curls of her hair, as Kate stood at the outer door of the lodgings in Zaandpoort Street. She was drawing on a pair of gloves which made a difficulty about the matter, and needed to be repeatedly coaxed with that adorable pout which Wat loved. She was clad from head to foot in doublet and pleated skirt of gray Scots cloth, woven both of them by that very worthy man and elder in the Kirk, William Edgar of Rhonehouse. She wore also a flat, broad bonnet; and the ribbon of the blue snood, which, in token of maidenhood, bound her hair, was tied in a dainty love-knot behind her ear.
The rebellious gloves were a pair of Spanish gauntlets of untanned leather, and she was calculating what she could buy for the silver florin, which comprised all the united resources of the Zaandpoort establishment for the day. She allowed the slightest sigh to escape her of regret for the easier finances of Balmaghie, where neither her father nor she herself ever knew aught of the providing till the dishes were on the table, so completely did the ancient house-keeper of Roger McGhie keep the matter in her own responsible but exceedingly jealous hands.