Then she took up her basket, which was pretty full and no burden for a lady, for she had picked fast and heedlessly as she spoke to me, and so turned away.

“Nay, but surely you know that there was more than that meant,” I said lamely.

“No need to have haled my name into the matter at all,” she said.

And then, seeing that my eyes went to the basket, she smiled a little, and held it to me with both hands.

“Well, if you meant some new sort of service, you can begin by carrying this for me.  I am going to the queen’s bower.”

I took it without a word, and we went silently together to the door that led to the queen’s end of the hall.  There she stayed for a moment with her hand on the latch.

But she had only a question to ask me: 

“Do you go with your father to the Welsh king’s court, as it is said that he will go shortly?”

“We start together in an hour’s time or thereabout,” I answered, wondering.

“Well then, take this to mind you of your vow,” she said, and threw a little bronze brooch, gilt and set with bright enamel, into the basket, and so fled into the house, leaving me on the doorstep with the apples.

I set them down there, and had a mind to leave the brooch also.  However, on second thoughts I took it, and went my way in a puzzled state of mind.  It certainly seemed that Elfrida was desperately angry with me for reasons which were not easy to fathom, and yet she had given me this—­that is, if to have a thing thrown at one is to have it given.  But I was not going to quarrel with the manner of a gift from Elfrida, and so I went on with it in my hand, and as I turned the corner into a fresh path I also ran into the abbot of the new minster, who was on his way to speak with Owen before he set out.  He had been a great friend of Bishop Aldhelm’s, and I had known him well since the old days of Malmesbury.

“So Oswald,” he cried, “I have been looking for you, that I might wish you all good in your thaneship.  Why, some of us are proud of you.  And I, having known you since you were a child, feel as if I had some sort of a share in your honours.  But what is amiss?  One would look to see you the gayest of the gay, and it seems as if the world had gone awry with you.”

Now, the abbot was just the friend to whom I could tell my present trouble without fear of being mocked, for he was wont to stand to us boys of the court as the good friend who would help us out of a scrape if he could, and make us feel ashamed thereof in private afterward, in all kindliness.  So I told him what was on my mind, for he was at the feast last night.

“It is all that vow of mine,” I said.  “I have just met Elfrida, and she is angry with me for naming her at all.”

“Unfair,” said the abbot.  “You could not have helped it, seeing that you were bidden to do so.”

I had forgotten that, and it was possible that Elfrida did not know it.  So I said that I did not look for quite the scorn I had met with, at all events.  Whereon the abbot stayed in his walk and asked more, trying to look grave as he heard me, and soon he had all the story.