The lads and men prepared to leave the premises, and Eustacia returned to her fireside.  She was immersed in thought, but not for long.  In a few minutes the lad Charley, who had come to ask permission to use the place, returned with the key to the kitchen.  Eustacia heard him, and opening the door into the passage said, “Charley, come here.”

The lad was surprised.  He entered the front room not without blushing; for he, like many, had felt the power of this girl’s face and form.

She pointed to a seat by the fire, and entered the other side of the chimney-corner herself.  It could be seen in her face that whatever motive she might have had in asking the youth indoors would soon appear.

“Which part do you play, Charley—­the Turkish Knight, do you not?” inquired the beauty, looking across the smoke of the fire to him on the other side.

“Yes, miss, the Turkish Knight,” he replied diffidently.

“Is yours a long part?”

“Nine speeches, about.”

“Can you repeat them to me?  If so I should like to hear them.”

The lad smiled into the glowing turf and began—­

   “Here come I, a Turkish Knight,
    Who learnt in Turkish land to fight,”

continuing the discourse throughout the scenes to the concluding catastrophe of his fall by the hand of Saint George.

Eustacia had occasionally heard the part recited before.  When the lad ended she began, precisely in the same words, and ranted on without hitch or divergence till she too reached the end.  It was the same thing, yet how different.  Like in form, it had the added softness and finish of a Raffaelle after Perugino, which, while faithfully reproducing the original subject, entirely distances the original art.

Charley’s eyes rounded with surprise.  “Well, you be a clever lady!” he said, in admiration.  “I’ve been three weeks learning mine.”

“I have heard it before,” she quietly observed.  “Now, would you do anything to please me, Charley?”

“I’d do a good deal, miss.”

“Would you let me play your part for one night?”

“Oh, miss!  But your woman’s gown—­you couldn’t.”

“I can get boy’s clothes—­at least all that would be wanted besides the mumming dress.  What should I have to give you to lend me your things, to let me take your place for an hour or two on Monday night, and on no account to say a word about who or what I am?  You would, of course, have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say that somebody—­a cousin of Miss Vye’s—­would act for you.  The other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives, so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, I should not mind.  Now, what must I give you to agree to this?  Half a crown?”

The youth shook his head

“Five shillings?”

He shook his head again.  “Money won’t do it,” he said, brushing the iron head of the fire-dog with the hollow of his hand.