"Have we a messenger boy here?" exclaimed the old woman: "We only wanted him to complete the merry company. So you can no longer do so much as carry your heap of weeds and grass? Master Jacques does the grand with a boy to carry his trash--I beg his pardon, he is becoming quite a great nobleman."
"Pay the boy and get rid of him; we want no spies here."
Pale as death, Gilbert sprang toward the door, but Jacques stopped him, saying with some firmness:
"This is not a messenger-boy or a spy. He is a guest whom I bring home."
"A guest?" and the hag let her hands drop along her hips. "This is the last straw."
"Light up, Therese," said the host, still kindly, but showing more will; "I am warm, and we are hungry."
The vixen's grumbling diminished in loudness. She drew fire with flint and steel, while Gilbert stood still by the sill which he regretted he had crossed. Jacques perceived what he suffered, and begged him to come forward.
Gilbert saw the hag's yellow and morose face by the first glimmer of the thin candle stuck in a brass candlestick. It inspired him with dislike. On her part the virago was far from liking the pale, fine countenance, circumspect silence and rigidity of the youth.
"I do not wonder at your being heated and hungry," she growled. "It must be tiresome to go browsing in the woods, and it is awful hard work to stoop from time to time to pick up a root. For I suppose this person gathers leaves and buds, too, for herb-collecting is the trade for those who do not any work."
"This is a good and honest young man," said Jacques, in a still firmer voice, "who has honored me with his company all day, and whom my good Therese will greet as a friend, I am sure."
"Enough for two is scant for three," she grumbled.
"I know your kind of frugality. I declare that there is not enough bread in the house for such abstemiousness, and that I am not going down three flights of stairs for more. Anyway, the baker's is shut up."
"Then, I will go," said Jacques, frowning. "Open the door, for I mean it."
"Oh, in that case, I suppose I must do it," said the scold.
"What am I for but to carry out your freaks? Come and have supper."
A table was set in the next room, small and square, with cherry wood chairs, having straw bottoms, and a bureau full of darned hose.