Or perhaps they simply spin (since, in the words of the Wife of Bath, God has given women three talents--deceit, weeping, and spinning!); and all the while she awes them with that tale of Griselda, her voice rising and falling to the steady hum of the wheels.
At last it is evening, and back comes the lord and master.

What a bustle and a pother this home-coming meant we know well, since we know what he expected.

Such a running and fetching of bowls of warm water to wash his feet, and comfortable shoes to ease him; such a hanging on his words and admiring of his labours.

Then comes supper, with a bevy of guests, or themselves all alone in the westering sunlight, while he smacks connoisseur's lips over the roast crane and the blankmanger, and she nibbles her sweet wafers.

Afterwards an hour of twilight, when she tells him how she has passed the day, and asks him what she shall do with the silly young housemaid, whom she caught talking to the tailor's 'prentice through that low window which looks upon the road.