And he came in, his eyes upon his brother. But the elder paid no heed to him, his anger gone for this time, and the mother was well content and knew she had decided well and so she moved to carry out her promise to the end.
And as she ever did in any little trouble, she went to the cousin and to the cousin’s wife, for she herself knew no maid, since none in that hamlet could be chosen, seeing all were kin by blood and marriage and had the same surname, nor did she know any maid in town, for there she had dealings only with such small shops as bought the little she had to sell. She went at an hour in evening, for the year was yet warm although early autumn was near, and they sat and talked while the cousin’s wife suckled her last child. The mother made known her want at last and said, “Then do you know any maid, my sister, in that village where you lived before you were wed? A maid like yourself I would like very well, easy tempered and quick to bear and good enough at labor. The house I can tend myself yet for many a year, and if she be not so good in the house I can endure it.”
The good cousin’s wife laughed at this loudly and looked at her man and cried, “I do not know if he would say your son would count it curse or blessing to have one like me.”
Then the man looked up in his slow way, a bit of rice stalk in his mouth which he had sat chewing as he listened, and he answered thoughtfully, “Oh, aye—good enough—” and his wife laughed again to hear his lukewarmness and then she said, “Well, and I can go there and see, sister, and there are two hundred families or so in that village, a market-town it is, and doubtless one maid among so many ready to be wed.”
So they talked on of it and the mother said plainly there must not be too great a cost, and she said, “I know very well I cannot hope for one of the very best in every way, since I am poor and my son has no great lot of land and we must rent more than we own.”
But the man spoke up and said to this, “Well, but you do own some land, and it is something nowadays when many have nothing at all, and I had liefer wed a maid of mine to a man who has some land and little silver than to one who has much silver and no firm land to stand on. A good man and good land—that would be sound promise for any maid if she were mine.” And when his wife said, “Well, then, children’s father, if you will let me go, I can go to that town a day or two, and look about,” then he said in his spare way, “Oh, aye, I will—the maids are old enough to free you now and then.”
So soon thereafter the cousin’s wife dressed herself clean and took the babe and a child or two among the little ones to show her father’s family and she took an elder two or so to help her with the little ones, and hired a wheelbarrow to put them all upon and she rode her husband’s gray ass he did not need these days now that the harvest was over and he could use his ox to tread the grain. They set forth thus and were gone three days and more. And when she was come back she was right full of all the maids that she had seen and she said to the mother, who ran to hear her when the news came she had returned,
“Maids there be a plenty in that village for we never kill them there as they do in some towns when babes are girls, and they are allowed to grow however many a mother has, and so the village is full of them. I saw a dozen that I knew myself, sister, all well grown and full of flesh and color, and any would have done for any son I have. But still only one was needed and I narrowed my two eyes and looked at this one and that one, and chose out three, and out of the three I looked again and saw one had a cough and a bubbly nose, and one was with some soreness of the eyes, and the third was best. She is a sharp and clever maid, I swear, very careful in all she says and does, and they say she is the quickest seamstress in the town. She makes her own clothes and clothes for all her father’s house and some for others and turns a bit of silver in. A little old she is, perhaps, for your lad, because once she was betrothed, and the man died out of time, or she would be wed by now. But this is not ill, either, for the father is eager to wed her somehow and will not ask much for her. She is not so pretty perhaps as the others—her face a little yellow from sewing overmuch, but she is clean-eyed.”
Then the mother answered quickly, “We have sore eyes enough in our house, I swear, and my eyes are not what they were either, and we need someone who sews and likes it. Settle it then, my sister, with this one, and if she is not above five years older than my son, it is well enough.”
So was it done, and the days of the month and the years in
