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While the maids whispered excitedly in one another's ears, Hildelitha began to sniff behind her apron. "I do not see why you wanted to bring him home, Lord Sebert. You know that Danes are odious to me since my husband, of holy memory, fell under their axes most detestable Yet I would not anger you, my honey-sweet lord," she broke off abruptly.
This Erkenwald was reputed to be a man of great holinesse and vertue. She was first brought vp and instructed in the rules of hir profession by one Hildelitha a nun of the parties beyond the seas, whome Erkenwald procured to come ouer for that purpose. Sebbie king of Eastsaxons.
He raised his hand as the pertest of the maids would have answered him, and there followed an uncomfortable pause. Then seven gowns swept the reed-strewn floor as seven courtesies fell, and Hildelitha thrust out her palm to give the pert maid a resounding box on the ear. "You have heard your master, hussy! Why do you not exert yourself to bring food?
"If we make haste, it may be that we can take Hildelitha and Father Ingulph by surprise," he laughed, leaping down on the crumbling doorstep and pulling his captive with him.
Knocking over her spinning-wheel to get to him, the woman Hildelitha threw her arms around her young lord's neck and gave him a hearty smack on either cheek; while the fat monk sputtered blessings between his paroxysms of coughing, and the six blooming girls made a screaming circle around them. Though he endured it amiably enough, the Etheling appeared in some haste to offer a diversion.
"The old ways are clean fallen out of England, and it becomes a man to consider diligently how he will order his future," he told Hildelitha and the old cniht when they inquired the reason for his abstraction.
Again he bent in his bow of stiff embarrassment; but he did not meet her glance even then, returning his gaze, soldier-like, to the King. Suppose he were going to treat her with the haughtiness she had seen him show Hildelitha or the old monk when they had displeased him! At the mere thought of it, she shrank and dropped her eyes to the coral chain that she was twining between her fingers.
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