from the monks, I trow, to fear a woman as thou wouldst a
lazar-house. Out upon them! that they should dishonor their own
mothers by such teaching. A pretty world it would be with all
the women out of it."

"Heaven forfend that such a thing should come to pass!" said
Alleyne.

"Amen and amen! But thou art a pretty lad, and the prettier for
thy modest ways. It is easy to see from thy cheek that thou hast
not spent thy days in the rain and the heat and the wind, as my
poor Wat hath been forced to do."

"I have indeed seen little of life, good dame."

"Wilt find nothing in it to pay for the loss of thy own
freshness. Here are the clothes, and Peter can leave them when
next he comes this way. Holy Virgin! see the dust upon thy
doublet! It were easy to see that there is no woman to tend to
thee. So!--that is better. Now buss me, boy."

Alleyne stooped and kissed her, for the kiss was the common
salutation of the age, and, as Erasmus long afterwards remarked,
more used in England than in any other country. Yet it sent the
blood to his temples again, and he wondered, as he turned away,
what the Abbot Berghersh would have answered to so frank an
invitation. He was still tingling from this new experience when
he came out upon the high-road and saw a sight which drove all
other thoughts from his mind.