But what couldst thou do with a tender maid out in the woods with thee ?" "I scarce know that myself; but anything would be better than life with a madman--as I trow our father is like to become an he change not his habit of life.

Belike I would take her to mine uncle on the bridge; yet perchance he would not thank me for adding to his charges.
"If we had other relatives--" "Why, and so ye have, even as we have.

Hast never heard of my Lady Humbert and Mistress Dowsabel Wyvern?
They must be kinsfolk of thine as well as of ours, and they dwell not very far distant from here, albeit I myself have never visited them." Cuthbert raised his head and looked eagerly at Philip.
"I would know more of that," he said.
"It is not much I can tell thee.

This Lady Humbert is a widow, and is sister to that Gertrude Wyvern who was my grandam and thy aunt.
Mistress Dowsabel is her younger sister; and albeit they are both now of a good old age, they dwell together, with only servants for company, in a house thou wouldst have passed on the road to London hadst thou not taken the lonelier way across the heath.

My father and mother go each year to see after their welfare, and a letter comes now and again from them with greetings or questions.