CHAPTER VII--THE PILGRIM OF SALISBURY
She hadde passed many a strange shrine,
At Rome she had been and at Boleine,
At Galice, at St. James, and at Coleine,
She could moche of wandering by the way.
CHAUCER, Canterbury Pilgrims.
Grisell found herself brought into a hall where a stout oak table
occupied the centre, covered with home-spun napery, on which stood
trenchers, wooden bowls, pewter and a few silver cups, and several
large pitchers of ale, small beer, or milk. A pie and a large piece
of bacon, also a loaf of barley bread and a smaller wheaten one, were
there.
Shelves all round the walls shone with pewter and copper dishes,
cups, kettles, and vessels and implements of all household varieties,
and ranged round the floor lay ploughshares, axes, and mattocks, all
polished up. The ring of hammers on the anvil was heard in the court
in the rear. The front of the hall was open for the most part,
without windows, but it could be closed at night.
Breakfast was never a regular meal, and the household had partaken of
it, so that there was no one in the hall excepting Master Hall, a
stout, brawny, grizzled man, with a good-humoured face, and his son,
more slim, but growing into his likeness, also a young notable-
looking daughter-in-law with a swaddled baby tucked under her arm.
They seated Grisell at the table, and implored her to eat. The
wheaten bread and the fowl were, it seemed, provided in her honour,
and she could not but take her little knife from the sheath in her
girdle, turn back her nun-like veil, and prepare to try to drive back
her sobs, and swallow the milk of almonds pressed on her.
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