The White Rose of Langley | Page 3

pie of custard or batter, with currants] 'tis all one to me, an' she will do
my bidding."
"Then methinks I could right well fit you. We have here at this instant
moment a small maid of twelve years, that my Lady the Prioress were
well fain to put with such as you be, and she bade me give heed to the
same. 'Tis a waif that Anthony, our goatherd, found in the forest, with
her mother, that was frozen to death in an hard winter; but the child
abode, and was saved. Truly, for cunning there is little in her; but for
meekness and readiness to do your will, the maid is as good as any. But
ye shall see her I think on."
Sister Oliva stepped to the door, and spoke in a low tone to some
person outside. She came back and reseated herself, and a minute
afterwards there was a low, timid tap at the door.
"Come in, child," said the nun.
And Maude came in.
She was small and slight for her twelve years, and preternaturally grave.
A quantity of long dark hair hung round her head in a condition of
seemingly hopeless tanglement, and the dark eyes, proportionately
larger than the rest of the features, wore an expression of mingled
apathy and suspicion, alike strange and painful to see in the eyes of a
child.
"Come forward, Maude, and speak with Mistress Drew. Mercy on us,
child! how hast moiled thine hair like a fowl his pennes!" [Feathers.]
Maude made no reply. She came a few steps nearer, dropped a rustic
courtesy, and stood to be questioned.
"What is thy name?" inquired Mistress Ursula, as though she were
beginning the catechism.
"Maude," said the child under her breath.

"And what years hast--twelve?"
"Twelve, the last Saint Margaret."
"And where wert born? Dost know?"
Maude knew, though for some reason with which she herself was best
acquainted, she had been much more chary of her information to my
Lady the Prioress than she now chose to be.
"At Pleshy, in Essex."
"And what work did thy father?"
Maude looked up with a troubled air, as if the idea of that relative's
possible existence had never suggested itself to her.
"I never had any father!" she said, in a pained tone. "Cousin Hawise
had a father, and he wrought iron on the anvil. But I had none--never! I
had a mother--that was all."
"And what called men thy mother?"
"Eleanor Gerard."
"Then thy name is Maude Gerard," said Oliva, sharply.
Maude's silence appeared to indicate that she declined to commit
herself either affirmatively or negatively.
"And what canst do, maid?" inquired Ursula, changing the subject to
one of more practical purport.
Perhaps the topic was too large for reply, for Maude's only response
was a nervous twisting of her fingers. Sister Oliva answered for her.
"Marry, she can pluck a chick, and roll pastry, and use a bedstaff, and
scour a floor, and sew, and the like. She hath not been idle, I warrant
you."

"Couldst cleanse out a pan an' thou wert set about it?"
"Ay," said Maude, under her breath.
"And couldst run of a message?"
"Ay."
"And couldst do as folk bid thee?"
"Ay."
But each time the child's voice grew fainter.
"Sister Oliva, I will essay the little maid, by your leave."
"And with my very good will, friend Ursula."
"Me counteth I shall make the best cook of her in all Herts. What sayest,
maid?--wilt of thy good will be a cook?"
Maude looked up, looked down, and said nothing. But nature had not
made her a cook, and the utmost Ursula Drew could do in that direction
was to spoil a good milliner.
So little Maude went with Ursula--into a very different sphere of life
from any which she could hitherto remember. The first home which she
recollected was her grandfather's cottage, with the great elms on one
side of it and the forge on the other, at which the old man had wrought
so long as his strength permitted, and had then handed over, as the
family inheritance, to his son. Since the world began for Maude, that
cottage and the forge had always stood there, and its inhabitants had
always been Grandfather, and Uncle David, and Aunt Elizabeth, and
Cousin Hawise, and Cousin Jack, and Mother.
At some unknown time in the remote past there had been a
grandmother, for Maude had heard of her; but with that exception, there
had never been anybody else, and her father was to her an utterly
mythic individual. She had never heard such a person named until

Ursula Drew inquired his calling. And then, one awful winter night,
something dreadful had happened. What it was Maude never precisely
knew. She only knew that there