While she busied herself in finding and folding them, Alleyne Edricson stood by the open door looking in at her with much interest and some distrust, for he had never been so nigh to a woman before.

She had round red arms, a dress of some sober woollen stuff, and a brass brooch the size of a cheese-cake stuck in the front of it.
"Peter the fuller!" she kept repeating.

"Marry come up! if I were Peter the fuller's wife I would teach him better than to give his clothes to the first knave who asks for them.

But he was always a poor, fond, silly creature, was Peter, though we are beholden to him for helping to bury our second son Wat, who was a 'prentice to him at Lymington in the year of the Black Death.

But who are you, young sir ?" "I am a clerk on my road from Beaulieu to Minstead." "Aye, indeed! Hast been brought up at the Abbey then.