The White Company / Белый отряд. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Alleyne was plodding down the slope upon one side, when he saw an old dame coming towards him upon the other, limping with weariness and leaning heavily upon a stick. When she reached the edge of the stream she stood helpless, looking to right and to left for some ford. Where the path ran down a great stone had been fixed in the centre of the brook, but it was too far from the bank for her aged and uncertain feet. Twice she thrust forward at it, and twice she drew back, until at last, giving it up in despair, she sat herself down by the brink and wrung her hands wearily.

There she still sat when Alleyne reached the crossing.

“Come, mother,” quoth he, “it is not so very perilous a passage.”

“Alas! good youth,” she answered, “I have a humour in the eyes, and though I can see that there is a stone there, I can by no means be sure as to where it lies.”

“That is easily amended,” said he cheerily, and picking her lightly up, for she was much worn with time, he passed across with her.

He could not but observe, however, that as he placed her down her knees seemed to fail her, and she could scarcely prop herself up with her staff.

“You are weak, mother,” said he. “Hast journeyed far I wot.”

“From Wiltshire, friend,” said she, in a quavering voice; “three days have I been on the road. I go to my son, who is one of the king’s regarders at Brockenhurst. He has ever said that he would care for me in mine old age.”

“And rightly, too, mother, since you cared for him in his youth.

But when have you broken fast?”

“At Lyndenhurst; but, alas! my money is at an end, and I could but get a dish of bran-porridge from the nunnery. Yet I trust that I may be able to reach Brockenhurst to-night, where I may have all that heart can desire; for, oh, sir! but my son is a fine man, with a kindly heart of his own, and it is as good as food to me to think that he should have a doublet of Lincoln-green[32 - Lincoln-green – оливково-зеленый (цвет назван по г.

Линкольн, Англия, где производился такой материал)] to his back and be the king’s own paid man.”

“It is a long road yet to Brockenhurst,” said Alleyne; “but here is such bread and cheese as I have left, and here, too, is a penny which may help you to supper. May God be with you!”

“May God be with you, young man!” she cried.