"And who come to these fairs?" she asked quickly.
Elspeth hung her head and coloured, glancing about as one caught in a trap.
"Enough of this nonsense!" the woman cried, upsetting the spotless linen angrily. "Tell me where I am and what game you play here! I will go myself and soon be quit of this wonderful Farm of yours and this masquerading Dame!"
"Elspeth," said the grave voice of the Dame herself, "you will be always at the talk, my child, and now you have made trouble, and you, my dear, if I were to tell you where you were, how would it help you to go elsewhere? Listen to me. Through yonder door you may go at this moment, but I advise you not to go without the great hound, for much is on the moors that is far from safe. And at the end he will only bring you here, for he knows no other way, and you would wander endlessly there."
She looked, and around the edge of the tilled land she saw mile upon mile of desolate moor. Rushing to the window at the end of the hall, she saw the pasture-land she had come through and beyond that a deep forest.
"But I came over water ..." she murmured, and the Dame said gravely:
"I know. All who come here come over water. But they do not go back over it."
Then her eyes grew wide with terror, not at the Dame's simple words, but at something strange that seemed to lie behind them, and she gave her hand to the Dame and walked quietly beside her to the orchard.
Here among the ripe fruit they sat down, the Dame busy at knitting, herself with twisted, idle hands, and she fought away her fear as she saw the stalwart men and the merry girls at work upon the clover-scented piles.
"Why am I afraid? These are simple people working--they are real; they talk and sing!" she said to herself, but her hands trembled and the high sun seemed to her more like the unreal glory of the coloured windows in some great church than the sun she knew.
Hardly was the Dame seated when two fine young boys ran toward her, struggling with each other to reach her first.
"Oh, mother, I have learned my book!" cried one, and the other, "Oh, dear mother, I can do the sum now!"
She kissed them fondly and told them she would hear them soon.
"And where are your sisters?" she asked them.