Free Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard by Eleanor Farjeon Page A

even a woman's waywardness?" Then she looked up of her own accord and kissed him.
    "In this way," she resumed, "it became my custom on each Saturday, after closing the forge, to come here with my woman's raiment, and wait in a hollow until night had fallen, and make myself clean of the week's blackness. For I dared not do this by daylight, or be seen going forth from my forge in my proper person."
    "But why did you choose to bathe at midnight?" asked the King.
    She was silent for a few moments, and then said hurriedly, "I did not choose to bathe at midnight until a month ago.--For the rest," she resumed, "I was hard to please in the matter of the shoes because I knew that when they were finished you would ride away. And therefore the more you improved the crosser I became. And if I have tormented you for a month it was because you tormented me by refusing to speak when you saw me here, in spite of your hateful vow; and you would not even look at my cake in the larder."
    "Women are strange," said the King. "How do you know I did not look at the cake?"
    "I do know," she said as hurriedly as before. "And if I would not tell you who I was, it was because I could not bear, on the other hand, to extort from you a love you seemed so reluctant to endure; until indeed it became of its own accord too strong even for the purpose which brought you every week to the Ring. For I knew that purpose, since all dwellers in Washington know why men go up the hill with the new moon."
    "But when my love did become too strong for my vow, and opened my lips at last," said the King, "why did you run away?"
    Viola said, "Had you not run away the week before? And now I have answered all your questions."
    "No," said the King, "not all. You haven't told me yet when you first loved me."
    Viola smiled and said, "I first stole barley sugar when my father said This is for the other little girl over the way'; and I first loved you when, seeing you had been too absent-minded to know that Pepper had cast her shoes, I feared you were in love."
    "But that was three minutes after we met!" cried the King.
    "Was it as much as that!" said she.
    Now after awhile Viola said, "Let us get down to the world again. We cannot stay here for ever."
    "Why not?" said the King. However, they walked to the brow of the hill, and stood together gazing awhile over the sunlit earth that had never been so beautiful to either of them; for their sight was newly-washed with love, and all things were changed.
    "Now I know how she looks from heaven," said the King, "and that is like heaven itself. Let us go; for I think she will still look so at our coming, seeing that we carry heaven with us."
    So they went downhill to the forge, and there Viola said to her lover, "I can stay no longer in this place where all men have known me as a lad; and besides, a woman's home is where her husband lives."
    "But I live only in a Barn," said William the King.
    "Then I will live there with you," said Viola, "and from this very night. But first I will shoe Pepper anew, for she is so unequally shod that she might spill us on the road. And that she may be shod worthily of herself and of us, give me what you have tied up in your blue handkerchief." The King fetched his handkerchief and unknotted it, and gave her his crown and scepter; and she set him at the bellows and made three golden shoes and shod the nag on her two fore-feet and her off hind-foot. But when she looked at the near hind-foot, which the King had shod last of all, she said: "I could not make a better. And therefore, like his father, the Lad must shut his smithy, for he is dead." Then she put the three shoes she had removed into a bag with some other trifles; and while she did so the King took what remained of the gold and made it into two rings. This done, they got on to Pepper's back, and with her three shoes of gold and one of iron she bore them the way the King had come. When they passed the Bush Hovel they saw the Wise Woman currying her