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"Wife, wife," put in I, seeing that the girl was like to split with rage, "speak gentler to Keren." "To Happuch," saith she. "Speak gentler to the girl," saith I, hoping to compromise, as 'twere. "Happuch," saith my wife again.
Well, the next morning, as I did pass out on my way to my forge, whom should I see in the garden but my Keren and Master Robert Hacket! and if e'er a woman was possessed o' a devil, 'twas just that lass o' mine then, comrade. She had caused young Hacket to climb up into a pear-tree, and while that he was up there she did bear away the ladder by which he had mounted, and she saith to him,
Saith she, not looking at him, "Thou liest." "How, mistress?" saith he, with his mouth as wide as a church door on a Sunday. "Why, for calling a lemon sweet," saith she, "when all the world doth know that it is sour." Thereat he did fall a-grinning again. "Sweet, sweet mistress Keren," quoth he, "'tis thee I praise, and not thy name. And I will wager that thou art not sour, Mistress Keren."
But th' other lads seemed to fall more daft about the lass than aye afore. Now, my wife's sister had a daughter, called Ruth, and in all things was she most different from my Keren.
"That's neither here nor there," saith she, still laughing. "But I'll lay thee my heifer, father, that Mistress Ruth's sweetheart cometh on the morrow to inquire after Mistress Ruth's cousin Keren." Wherewith she did make me a deep courtesy, and did get her back to the other lasses ere I could reply.
He was as brown as my Keren, and nearly half as tall again; and he had eyes like pools o' water under a night heaven, wherein two stars have drowned themselves, as 'twere, and brows as black and straight as a sweep o' cloud across an evening sky. Ruth walked at his side, all glittering with her unbound hair, like to a sunbeam that follows a dark stream.
So I said to myself, "'Ware, 'ware, my little spring lamb; there is trouble ahead for thee. Thou wilt not win thy Boaz so easily as thou dost think, my little Ruth." Now, when they were come to the fields, and the maids seated under some elm-trees, and all the lads fallen to 't with their sickles, while that they were reaping the glistening corn my Keren doth leap to her feet, and she calls out,
"If an he be not," quoth her mother, who, though not half so big as her child, was in nowise less valiant "if an he be not," quoth she, "'tis time he were." "And for why?" saith Keren. "Thou knowest as well as I do, Happuch," saith my wife; whereat up started my crack-brain in a fine fury.
"Go to!" saith Keren; "go to! I have not got him to give him back to thee." "Thou hast!" saith Ruth; "thou hast! he is thine, soul and body soul and body! And thou dost not care; and I care oh, I care so that I know not how to word it!" "I say shame on thee to say so," saith my lass again. But the wench still hung about her, and would not let go, and she saith,
But, strange to say or not, as thou wilt have 't, he did seem to love Keren more than he did th' mother that bore him, a-crying for her did she but so much as turn her back, and not sleeping unless that she would croon his lullabies to him.
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