Emily Sarah Holt
"All's Well"; or, Alice's Victory
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066147464
Table of Contents
Emily Sarah Holt
"All's Well"
Chapter One.
Friends and neighbours.
“Give you good-morrow, neighbour! Whither away with that great fardel (Bundle), prithee?”
“Truly, Mistress, home to Staplehurst, and the fardel holdeth broadcloth for my lads’ new jerkins.” The speakers were two women, both on the younger side of middle age, who met on the road between Staplehurst and Cranbrook, the former coming towards Cranbrook and the latter from it. They were in the midst of that rich and beautiful tract of country known as the Weald of Kent, once the eastern part of the great Andredes Weald, a vast forest which in Saxon days stretched from Kent to the border of Hampshire. There was still, in 1556, much of the forest about the Weald, and even yet it is a well-wooded part of the country, the oak being its principal tree, though the beech sometimes grows to an enormous size. Trees of the Weald were sent to Rome for the building of Saint Peter’s.
“And how go matters with you, neighbour?” asked the first speaker, whose name was Alice Benden.
“Well, none so ill,” was the reply. “My master’s in full work, and we’ve three of our lads at the cloth-works. We’re none so bad off as some.”
“I marvel how it shall go with Sens Bradbridge, poor soul! She’ll be bad off enough, or I err greatly.”
“Why, how so, trow? I’ve not heard what ails her.”
“Dear heart! then you know not poor Benedict is departed?”
“Eh, you never mean it!” exclaimed the bundle-bearer, evidently shocked. “Why, I reckoned he’d taken a fine turn toward recovery. Well, be sure! Ay, poor Sens, I’m sorry for her.”
“Two little maids, neither old enough to earn a penny, and she a stranger in the town, pretty nigh, with never a