O master, if you did, I would stay behind, in some
poor hovel on the shore, where none would track him, and tend him
there. I will! I vow it to St. Mary."
"Hush, hush, lady! Cease this strange passion. You could not be
more moved if he were the tenderest spouse who ever breathed."
"But you will have pity, sir. You will aid us. You will save us.
Give him the chance for life."
"What say you, housewife?" said Groot, turning to the silent
Clemence, whom his signs and their looks had made to perceive the
point at issue. Her reply was to seize Grisell's two hands, kiss
them fervently, clasp both together, and utter in her deaf voice two
Flemish words, "Goot Vrow." Grisell eagerly embraced her in tears.
"We have still to see what Skipper Vrowst says. He may not choose to
meddle with English outlaws."
"If you cannot win him to take my knight, he will not take me," said
Grisell.
There was no more to be said except something about the waywardness
of the affections of women and dogs; but Master Groot was not ill-
pleased at the bottom that both the females of the household took
part against him, and they had a merry supper that night, amid the
chests in which their domestic apparatus and stock-in-trade were
packed, with the dried lizard, who passed for a crocodile, sitting on
the settle as if he were one of the company. Grisell's spirits rose
with an undefined hope that, like Sir Gawaine's bride, or her own
namesake, Griselda the patient, she should at last win her lord's
love; and, deprived as she was of all her own relatives, there arose
strongly within her the affection that ten long years ago had made
her haunt the footsteps of the boy at Amesbury Manor.
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