KATE (gathering flowers).
These roses for my Lady Marian; these lilies to lighten Sir Richard’s black room, where he sits and eats his heart for want of money to pay the abbot.

    FIRST RETAINER.
You do well, Mistress Kate, to sing and to gather roses. You be fed with tit-bits, you, and we be dogs that have only the bones, till we be only bones our own selves.

    SECOND RETAINER.
I am fed with tit-bits no more than you are, but I keep a good heart and make the most of it; and, truth to say, Sir Richard and my Lady Marian fare wellnigh as sparely as their people.

    THIRD RETAINER.
And look at our suits, out at knee, out at elbow. We be more like scarecrows in a field than decent servingmen; and then, I pray you, look at Robin Earl of Huntingdon’s men.

    FIRST RETAINER.
She hath looked well at one of ’em, Little John.

    THIRD RETAINER.
Ay, how fine they be in their liveries, and each of ’em as full of meat as an egg, and as sleek and as round-about as a mellow codlin.

    FOURTH RETAINER.
But I be worse off than any of you, for I be lean by nature, and if you cram me crop-full I be little better than Famine in the picture, but if you starve me I be Gaffer Death himself. I would like to show you, Mistress Kate, how bare and spare I be on the rib: I be lanker than an old horse turned out to die on the common.

    KATE.
Spare me thy spare ribs, I pray thee; but now I ask you all, did none of you love young Walter Lea?

    FIRST RETAINER.
Ay, if he had not gone to fight the King’s battles, we should have better battles at home.

    KATE.
Right as an Oxford scholar, but the boy was taken prisoner by the Moors.

    FIRST RETAINER.
Ay.

    KATE.
And Sir Richard was told he might be ransomed for two thousand marks in gold.

    FIRST RETAINER.
Ay.

    KATE.
Then he borrowed the moneys from the Abbot of York, the Sheriff’s brother. And if they be not paid back at the end of the year, the land goes to the abbot.

    FIRST RETAINER.
No news of young Walter?

    KATE.
None, nor of the gold, nor the man who took out the gold; but now ye know why we live so stintedly, and why ye have so few grains to peck at. Sir Richard must scrape and scrape till he get to the land again. Come, come, why do ye loiter here? Carry fresh rushes into the dining-hall, for those that are there they be so greasy and smell so vilely that my Lady Marian holds her nose when she steps across it.

    FOURTH RETAINER.
Why there, now! that very word ‘greasy’ hath a kind of unction in it, a smack of relish about it. The rats have gnawed ’em already. I pray Heaven we may not have to take to the rushes.

    KATE.
Poor fellows!

    LITTLE JOHN.
    My master, Robin the Earl, is always a-telling us that every man, for the sake of the great blessed Mother in heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all honour, and speak small to ’em, and not scare ’em, but go about to come at their love with all manner of homages, and observances, and circumbendibuses.

    KATE.

    LITTLE JOHN (seeing her).
    O the sacred little thing! What a shape! what lovely arms! A rose to the man! Ay, the man had given her a rose, and she gave him another.

    KATE.
Shall I keep one little rose for Little John? No.

    LITTLE JOHN.
There, there! You see I was right. She hath a tenderness toward me, but is too shy to show it. It is in her, in the woman, and the man must bring it out of her.

    KATE.

    LITTLE JOHN.
Did she? But there I am sure the ballad is at fault. It should have told us how the man first kissed the maid. She does n’t see me. Shall I be bold? shall I touch her? shall I give her the first kiss? O sweet Kate, my first love, the first kiss, the first kiss!

    KATE (turns and kisses him).
    Why lookest thou so amazed?

    LITTLE JOHN.
I cannot tell; but I came to give thee the first kiss, and thou hast given it me.

    KATE.
But if a man and a maid care for one another, does it matter so much if the maid give the first kiss?

    LITTLE JOHN.
I cannot tell, but I had sooner have given thee the first kiss. I was dreaming of it all the way hither.

    KATE.
Dream of it, then, all the way back, for now I will have none of it.

    LITTLE JOHN.
Nay, now thou hast given me the man’s kiss, let me give thee the maid’s.

    KATE.
If thou draw one inch nearer, I will give thee a buffet on the face.

    LITTLE JOHN.
Wilt thou not give me rather the little rose for Little John?

    KATE (throws it down and tramples on it).
There!    

    LITTLE JOHN.
Thanks, my lady—inasmuch as I am a true believer in true love myself, and your ladyship hath sung the old proverb out of fashion.

    MARIAN.
Ay, but thou hast ruffled my woman, Little John. She hath the fire in her face and the dew in her eyes. I believed thee to be too solemn and formal to be a ruffler. Out upon thee!

    LITTLE JOHN.
I am no ruffler, my lady; but I pray you, my lady, if a man and a maid love one another, may the maid give the first kiss?

    MARIAN.
It will be all the more gracious of her if she do.

    LITTLE JOHN.
I cannot tell. Manners be so corrupt, and these are the days of Prince John.

    SIR RICHARD.
Marian!

    MARIAN.
Father!

    SIR RICHARD.
Who parted from thee even now?

    MARIAN.
That strange starched stiff creature, Little John, the earl’s man. He would grapple with a lion like the King, and is flustered by a girl’s kiss.

    SIR RICHARD.
There never was an earl so true a friend of the people as Lord Robin of Huntingdon.

    MARIAN.
A gallant earl. I love him as I hate John.

    SIR RICHARD.
I fear me he hath wasted his revenues in the service of our good King Richard against the party of John, as I have done, as I have done: and where is Richard?

    MARIAN.
Cleave to him, father! he will come home at last.

    SIR RICHARD.
I trust he will, but if he do not I and thou are but beggars.

    MARIAN.
We will be beggar’d then, and be true to the King.

    SIR RICHARD.
Thou speakest like a fool or a woman. Canst thou endure to be a beggar whose whole life hath been folded like a blossom in the sheath, like a careless sleeper in the down; who never hast felt a want, to whom all things, up to this present, have come as freely as heaven’s air and mother’s milk?

    MARIAN.
Tut, father! I am none of your delicate Norman maidens who can only broider and mayhap ride a-hawking with the help of the men. I can bake and I can brew, and by all the saints I can shoot almost as closely with the bow as the great earl himself. I have played at the foils too with Kate: but is not to-day his birthday?

    SIR RICHARD.
Dost thou love him indeed, that thou keepest a record of his birthdays? Thou knowest that the Sheriff of Nottingham loves thee.

    MARIAN.
The sheriff dare to love me? me who worship Robin the great Earl of Huntingdon? I love him as a damsel of his day might have loved Harold the Saxon or Hereward the Wake. They both fought against the tyranny of the kings, the Normans. But then your sheriff, your little man, if he dare to fight at all, would fight for his rents, his leases, his houses, his moneys, his oxen, his dinners, himself. Now your great man, your Robin, all England’s Robin, fights not for himself but for the people of England. This John—this Norman tyranny—the stream is bearing us all down, and our little sheriff will ever swim with the stream! but our great man, our Robin, against it. And how often in old histories have the great men striven against the stream, and how often in the long sweep of years to come must the great man strive against it again to save his country and the liberties of his people! God bless our well-beloved Robin, Earl of Huntingdon!

    SIR RICHARD.
Ay, ay. He wore thy colours once at a tourney. I am old and forget. Was Prince John there?

    MARIAN.
The Sheriff of Nottingham was there—not John.

    SIR RICHARD.
Beware of John and the Sheriff of Nottingham. They hunt in couples, and when they look at a maid they blast her.

    MARIAN.
Then the maid is not high-hearted enough.

    SIR RICHARD.
There—there—be not a fool again. Their aim is ever at that which flies highest—but O girl, girl, I am almost in despair. Those two thousand marks lent me by the abbot for the ransom of my son Walter—I believed this abbot of the party of King Richard, and he hath sold himself to that beast John—they must be paid in a year and a month, or I lose the land. There is one that should be grateful to me overseas, a count in Brittany—he lives near Quimper. I saved his life once in battle. He has moneys. I will go to him. I saved him. I will try him. I am all but sure of him. I will go to him.

    MARIAN.
And I will follow thee, and God help us both!

    SIR RICHARD.
Child, thou shouldst marry one who will pay the mortgage. This Robin, this Earl of Huntingdon—he is a friend of Richard—I know not, but he may save the land, he may save the land.

    MARIAN (showing a cross hung around her neck).
Father, you see this cross?

    SIR RICHARD.
Ay, the King, thy godfather, gave it thee when a baby.

    MARIAN.
And he said that whenever I married he would give me away, and on this cross I have sworn [kisses it] that, till I myself pass away, there is no other man that shall give me away.

    SIR RICHARD.
Lo there!—thou art fool again—I am all as loyal as thyself, but what a vow! what a vow!

    LITTLE JOHN.
My Lady Marian, your woman so flustered me that I forgot my message from the earl. To-day he hath accomplished his thirtieth birthday, and he prays your ladyship and your ladyship’s father to be present at his banquet to-night.

    MARIAN.
Say, we will come.

    LITTLE JOHN.
And I pray you, my lady, to stand between me and your woman, Kate.

    MARIAN.
I will speak with her.

    LITTLE JOHN.
I thank you, my lady, and I wish you and your ladyship’s father a most exceedingly good morning.

    SIR RICHARD.
Thou hast answered for me, but I know not if I will let thee go.

    MARIAN.
I mean to go.

    SIR RICHARD.
Not if I barred thee up in thy chamber, like a bird in a cage.

    MARIAN.
Then I would drop from the casement, like a spider.

    SIR RICHARD.
But I would hoist the drawbridge, like thy master.

    MARIAN.
And I would swim the moat, like an otter.

    SIR RICHARD.
But I would set my men-at-arms to oppose thee, like the lord of the castle.

    MARIAN
And I would break through them all, like the King of England.

    SIR RICHARD.
Well, thou shalt go, but O the land! the land! my great great great grandfather, my great great grandfather, my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my own father—they were born and bred on it— it was their mother—they have trodden it for half a thousand years, and whenever I set my own foot on it I say to it, ‘Thou art mine,’ and it answers, ‘I am thine to the very heart of the earth’—but now I have lost my gold, I have lost my son, and I shall lose my land also. Down to the devil with this bond that beggars me!

    MARIAN.
Take it again, dear father, be not wroth at the dumb parchment. Sufficient for the day, dear father! let us be merry to-night at the banquet.