mule, and when the stranger set down his cup, he saw a large piece of bread held out towards him, and caught a glance of the blue eyes that seemed intended as an encouragement to him to take this additional gift.
“But perhaps that is your own breakfast,” he said.
“No, I have had enough without payment. A thousand thanks, my gentle one.”
There was no rejoinder in words; but the piece of bread was pushed a little nearer to him, as if in impatience at his refusal; and as the long dark eyes of the stranger rested on the baby-face, it seemed to be gathering more and more courage to look up and meet them.
“Ah, then, if I must take the bread,” he said, laying his hand on it, “I shall get bolder still, and beg for another kiss to make the bread sweeter.”
His speech was getting wonderfully intelligible in spite of the strange voice, which had at first almost seemed a thing to make her cross herself.
She blushed deeply, and lifted up a corner of her mantle to her mouth again. But just as the too presumptuous stranger was leaning forward, and had his fingers on the arm that held up the screening mantle, he was startled by a harsh voice close upon his ear.
“Who are you —with a murrain to you? No honest buyer, I’ll warrant, but a hanger-on of the dicers—or something worse. Go! dance off, and find fitter company, or I’ll give you a tune to a little quicker time than you’ll like.”
The young stranger drew back and looked at the speaker with a glance provokingly free from alarm and deprecation, and his slight expression of saucy amusement broke into a broad beaming smile as he surveyed the figure of his threatenor.