Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard | Page 9

from the apple-boughs."
"You cannot come in," said Joscelyn, "lest you are the bearer of a word
to our master's daughter who sits weeping in the Well-House."
"From whom should I bear her a word?" asked Martin Pippin in great
amazement.
The milkmaids cast down their eyes, and little Joan said, "It is a secret."
Martin: I will inquire no further. But shall I not play a little on my lute?
It is as good an hour for song and dance as any other, and I will make a
tune for a sunny May evening, and you shall sway among the grasses
like any flower on the bough."
Jane: In my opinion that can hurt nobody.
Jessica: Gillian wouldn't care two pins.
Joyce: She would utter no word though we tripped it for a week.
Joscelyn: So long as he keeps to his side of the hedge--
Jennifer: --and we to ours.
"Oh, I do love to dance!" cried little Joan.
"Man!" they commanded him as one voice, "play and sing to us
instantly!"
"My pretty ones," laughed Martin Pippin, "songs are as light as air, but
worth more than pearls and diamonds. What will you give me for my

song? Wait, now!--I have it. You shall fetch me the ring from the finger
of your little mistress, who sits hidden beneath the fountain of her own
bright tresses."
The milkmaids at these words nodded gayly, and little Joan tip-toed to
the Well-House, and slipped the ring from Gillian's finger as lightly as
a daisy may be slipped from its fellow on the chain. Then she ran with
it to the gate, and Martin held up his little finger, and she put it on,
saying:
"Now you will keep your promise, honey-sweet singer, and play a
dance for a May evening when the blossom blows for happiness on the
apple-trees."
So Martin Pippin tuned his lute and sang what follows, while the girls
floated in ones and twos among the orchard grass:
A-floating, a-floating, what saw I a-floating?
Fairy ships rocking with
pink sails and white
Smoothly as swans on a river of light
Saw I
a-floating?
No, it was apple-bloom, rosy and fair,
Softly obeying
the nod of the air
I saw a-floating.
A-floating, a-floating, what saw I
a-floating?
White clouds at eventide blown to and fro
Lightly as
bubbles the cherubim blow,
Saw I a-floating?
No, it was pretty girls
gowned like a flower
Blown in a ring round their own apple-bower

I saw a-floating.
Or was it my dream, my dream only--who knows?--

As frail as a snowflake, as flushed as a rose,
I saw a-floating?

A-floating, a-floating, what saw I a-floating?
Martin sang, and the milkmaids danced, and Gillian in her prison only
heard the dropping of her tears, and only saw the rainbow prisms on her
lashes. But presently she laid her cheek against her hand, and missed a
touch she knew; and on that revealed her lovely face so full of woe, that
Martin needs must comfort her or weep himself. And the dancers took
no heed when he made one step across the gate and went under the
trees to the Well-House.
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" sighed Gillian, "if you had only lived they

would never have stolen the ring from my finger while I sat heartsick."
Above her head a whispering voice replied, "Oh, Daughter, Daughter,
mend your dear heart! You shall wear this other ring when yours is
gone over the duckpond to Adversane."
Oh wonder! Out of the very heavens fell a silver ring into her bosom.
And if that night Gillian slept not, neither wept she.
PART III
In the beginning of the first week in September Martin Pippin came
once more to Adversane, and he said to himself when he saw it:
"Now this is the prettiest hamlet I ever had the luck to light on in my
wanderings. And if chance or fortune will, I shall some day come this
way again."
While he was thinking these thoughts, his ears were assailed by groans
and sighs, so that he wet his finger and held it up to find which way the
wind blew on this burning day of blue and gold. But no wind coming,
he sought some other agency for these gusts, and discovered it in a
wheat-field where was a young fellow stooking sheaves. A very young
fellow he was, turned copper by the sun; and as he stooked he heaved
such sighs that for every shock he stooked two tumbled at his feet.
When Martin had seen this happen more than once he called aloud to
the harvester.
"Young master!" said Martin, "the mill that grinds your grain will need
no wind to its sails, and that's flat."
The young man looked up from his labors to reply.
"There are no mill-stones in all the world," said he, "strong enough to
grind the grain