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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Little Lady, by Emily Sarah Holt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Our Little Lady
+       Six Hundred Years Ago
+
+Author: Emily Sarah Holt
+
+Illustrator: M. Irwin
+
+Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23121]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR LITTLE LADY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+Our Little Lady--Six Hundred Years Ago, by Emily Sarah Holt.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+This is one of the approximately thirty books by Emily Holt about life
+in the Middle Ages.  The language of the book is basically English as
+we would understand it, strongly flavoured with words and phrases from
+the Middle Ages.  The other thing that comes across strongly is how
+different the attitudes to life were in those days.
+
+Avice, one of the elder women in the book, tells the story of how she
+had become a nursery-maid in the Royal Palace, first at Windsor, and
+then later at Westminster.  One of the princesses she had to look after
+was a most beautiful child, but had been born deaf and dumb.  She had
+various gestures with which she communicated, but the sadness was, that
+they never could teach her to pray.  Yet they were sure she spoke to
+Christ in her own way.  The poor child died young.  This all took place
+at the end of the thirteenth century, hence the six hundred years of the
+title.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+OUR LITTLE LADY, SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE.
+
+SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO--WHAT THINGS WERE LIKE.
+
+The afternoon service was over in Lincoln Cathedral, and the
+congregation were slowly filing out of the great west door.  But that
+afternoon service was six hundred years ago, and both the Cathedral and
+the congregation would look very strange to us if we saw them now.
+Those days were well called the Dark Ages, and how dark they were we can
+scarcely realise in the present day.  Let us fancy ourselves coming out
+of that west door, and try to picture what we should have seen there,
+six hundred years ago.
+
+The Cathedral itself is hardly to be known.  It is crowded with painted
+images and embroidered banners, and filled with the smoke and scent of
+burning incense.  The clergy are habited, not in white surplices or in
+black gowns, but in large stiff cloaks--copes they are called--of
+scarlet silk, heavy with gold embroidery.  The Bishop, who is in the
+pulpit, wears a cope of white, thick with masses of gold, and on his
+head is a white and gold mitre.  How unlike that upper chamber, where
+the disciples gathered together after the crucifixion of their Master!
+Is it better or worse, do you ask?  Well, I think if the Master were to
+come in, it would be easier to see Him in the quiet upper chamber, where
+there was nothing else to see, than in the perfumed and decorated
+Cathedral where there was so much else!
+
+But now let us look at the congregation as they pass out.  Are they all
+women? for all alike seem to wear long skirts and thick hoods: there are
+neither trousers, nor hats, nor bonnets.  No, there is a fair sprinkling
+of men; but men and women dressed more alike then than they do now.  You
+will see, if you look, that some of these long skirts are open in front,
+and you may catch a glimpse of a beard here and there under the hood.
+This is a poor woman who comes now: she wears a serge dress which has
+cost her about three-halfpence a yard, and a threadbare hood for which
+she may have given sixpence.
+
+Are things so cheap, then?  No, just the other way about; money is so
+dear.  The wages of a mason or a bricklayer are about sixpence a week;
+haymakers have the same; reapers get from a shilling to half-a-crown,
+and mowers one and ninepence.  The gentlemen who wait on the King
+himself only receive a shilling a day.
+
+Here comes one of them, in a long green robe of shining silky stuff,
+which is called samite; round his neck is a curiously cut collar of dark
+red cloth, and in his hand he carries a white hood.  Men do not confine
+themselves to the quiet, sober colours that we are accustomed to see;
+they are smarter than the ladies themselves.  This knight, as he passes
+out, throws his gown back, before mounting his horse, and you see his
+yellow hose striped with black--trousers and stockings all in a piece,
+as it were--with low black shoes, and gilt spurs.
+
+But who follows him?--this superbly dressed woman in rich blue
+glistening samite, with a black and gold hood, under which we see her
+hair bound with a golden fillet, and a necklace of costly pearls clasped
+round her throat--for it is a warm day, and she has not tied her hood.
+She must be somebody of consequence, for a smart gentleman leads her by
+the hand, and one with a long staff walks in front, to keep the people
+from pressing too close on her.  She is indeed somebody of consequence--
+the Countess of Lincoln herself, by birth an Italian Princess; and she
+is so grand, and so rich, and so beautiful and stately--and I am sorry
+to add, so proud--that people call her the Queen of Lincoln.  She has
+not far to go home--only through the archway, and past Saint Michael's
+Church and the Bull Gate, and then the great portcullis of the grim old
+Castle lifts its head to receive its lady, and she disappears from our
+sight.
+
+Do you notice that carpets are spread along the streets for her?--not
+carpets like ours, but the only sort they have, which are a kind of
+rough matting.  And indeed she needs them, if those purple velvet shoes
+of hers are not to be quite ruined by the time she reaches home.  For
+there are no pavements, and the streets are almost ankle-deep in mud,
+and worse than mud.  Dead cats, rotten vegetables, animal refuse, and
+every kind of abominable thing that you could see or think of, all lie
+about in heaps, in these narrow, narrow streets, where the sun can
+hardly get down to the ground, and two people might sometimes shake
+hands from opposite windows in the upper stories, for they come farther
+out than the lower ones.  Everybody throws all his rubbish into the
+street; all his slops, all his ashes, all his everything of which he
+wants to get rid.  The smells are something dreadful, as soon as you
+come out of the perfumed churches.  It is pleasanter to have the
+churches perfumed, undoubtedly; but it would be a good deal healthier if
+they kept the streets clean.
+
+Quietly following the grand young Countess, at a respectful distance,
+come two women who are evidently mother and daughter.  Their dress shows
+that they are not absolutely poor, but it tells at least as plainly that
+they are not at all rich.  Just as they reach the west door, a little
+girl of ten comes quickly after them, dressed just like themselves, a
+woman in miniature.
+
+"Why, Avice, where hast thou been?" says the elder of the two women.
+
+"I was coming, Grandmother," explains little Avice, "and Father Thomas
+called me, and bade me tell you that the holy Bishop would come to see
+you this afternoon, and sup his four-hours with you."
+
+Four-hours, taken as its name shows at four o'clock, was the meal which
+answered to our tea.  Bishops do not often drink tea with women of this
+class, but this was a peculiar Bishop, and the woman to whom he sent
+this message was his own foster-sister.
+
+"Truly, and I shall be glad to see him," says the Grandmother; and on
+they go out of the west door.
+
+The carpets which were spread for the Countess have been rolled away,
+and our three humble friends pick their steps as best they may among the
+dirt-heaps, occasionally slipping into a puddle--I am afraid Avice now
+and then walks into it deliberately for the fun of the splash!--and
+following the road taken by the Countess as far as the Bull Gate, they
+then turn to the left, leaving the frowning Castle on their right, and
+begin to descend the steep slope well named Steephill.
+
+They have not gone many yards when two people overtake them--a man and a
+woman.  The man stops to speak: the woman marches on with her arms
+folded and her head in the air, as if they were invisible.
+
+"Good morrow, Dan," says the old lady.
+
+"Good morrow, Mother," answers Dan.
+
+"What's the matter with Filomena?"
+
+"A touch of the old complaint, that's all," answers Dan drily.  "We'd a
+few words o' th' road a-coming--leastwise she had, for she got it pretty
+much to herself--and for th' next twelve hours or so she'll not be able
+to see anybody under a squire."
+
+"Is she often like that, Dan?"
+
+"Well, it doesn't come more days than seven i' th' week."
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say it's so every day?" said Agnes, the younger
+woman of our trio.
+
+Dan shook his head.  "Happen there's an odd un now and then as gets let
+off," said he.  "But I must after her, or there'll be more hot water.
+And it comes to table boilin', I can tell you.  Good morrow!"
+
+Dan runs rather heavily after his incensed spouse, and our friends
+continue to pick their way down Steephill.  For rather more than half
+the way they go, and when just past the Church of Saint Lawrence, they
+turn into a narrow street on the left, and in a few yards more they are
+at home.
+
+Home is one of the smallest houses you ever saw.  It has only two rooms,
+one above the other; but they are a fair size, being about twenty-five
+feet by sixteen.  The upper, of course, is the bedroom; the lower one is
+kitchen and parlour; and a ladder leads from one to the other.  The
+upper chamber holds a bed, which is like a box out of which the bottom
+has been taken, filled with straw, and on that is a hard straw mattress,
+two excessively coarse blankets, and a thick, shaggy, woollen rug for a
+counterpane.  There are not any sheets or pillow-cases; but a thick,
+hard bolster, stuffed like the mattress with straw, serves for a pillow.
+
+At the foot of the oak bedstead is a large oak chest, big enough to hold
+a man, in which the owners keep all their small property of any value.
+There are no chairs, but the deep windows have wooden seats, and two
+wooden stools are in the corners.  As to wardrobes, chests of drawers,
+dressing-tables, and washstands, nobody knows of such things at that
+day.  The chest serves the purpose of all except the washstand, and they
+find that (as much as they have of it) at the draw-well in the little
+back yard.  The window is just a square hole in the wall, closed with a
+wooden shutter, so that light and air--if not wind and rain--come in
+together.  A looking-glass they have, but a poor makeshift it is, being
+of metal and rounded; and those who know what a comical aspect your face
+takes when you see it in a metal teapot, can guess how far anybody could
+see himself rightly in it.  It is nailed up, too, so high on the wall
+that it is not easy to see anything.  This is all the furniture of the
+bedroom.
+
+Downstairs there is more though there are no chairs and tables, unless a
+leaf-table in the wall, which lets down, can go by that name.  There are
+two or three long settles stretching across the wall--the settle was
+called a bench when it had a back to it, and a form if it had not.
+There is a large bake-stone in one corner; the bread is put on the top
+to bake, with the fire underneath, and when there is no fire, the top
+can be used as a table, a moulding board, or in many other ways.  But it
+must not be supposed that such bread is in large square or cottage
+loaves like ours.  It is made in flat cakes, large or small, thick or
+thin.  By the side of the bake-stone is the sink, or rather that which
+answers to one, being a rough brick basin, with a plug in the bottom,
+and just beneath it is a little channel in the brick floor, by which,
+when the plug is pulled up, the dirty water finds its way out into the
+street under the house door.  People who live in this way need--and
+wear--short gowns and stout shoes.
+
+The opposite corner holds the pine-torches and chips; they burn nothing
+but wood, for though coal is known, it is very little used.  This is
+partly because it is expensive; but also because it is considered
+shockingly unhealthy.  The smoke from wood or turf is thought very
+wholesome; but that from coal is just the reverse.  Opposite the
+bake-stone is the window; a very little one, much wider than it is high,
+and rilled with exceedingly small diamond-shaped panes of very poor
+greenish glass set in lead, there being so much lead and so little glass
+that the room is but dark in the brightest sunshine.  Indeed, it is
+decidedly a sign of gentility that the house has any window at all,
+beyond the square hole with the wooden shutter.
+
+Up and down the room there are several stools, high and low; the high
+ones serve when wanted as little movable tables.  In the third corner is
+a bread-rack, filled with hard oat-cake above, and the soft flat cakes
+of wheat flour below; in the fourth stand several large barrels
+containing salt fish, salt meat, flour, meal, and ale.  From the top of
+the room hang hams, herbs in canvas bags, strings of smoked fish, a few
+empty baskets and pails, and anything else which can be hung up.  The
+rafters are so low that when the inmates move about they have every now
+and then to courtesy to a ham or a pail, which would otherwise hit them
+on the head.  A door by the window leads into the street, and another
+beyond the barrels gives access to the back yard.
+
+How would you like to go back, gentle reader, to this style of life?
+This was the way in which your forefathers lived, six hundred years
+ago--unless they were very grand people indeed.  Then they lived in a
+big castle with walls two or three feet thick, and ate from gold or
+silver plates, and had the luxury of a chimney in their dining-rooms.
+But even then, there were a good many little matters in respect of which
+I do not fancy you would quite like to change with them!  Would you like
+to eat with your fingers, and to find creeping creatures everywhere, and
+to have _no_ books and newspapers, and no letters, and no shops except
+in great towns, and no way of getting about except on foot or horseback,
+and no lamps, candles, clocks or watches, china, spectacles, nor carpets
+on the floor?  Yet this was the way in which kings and queens lived, six
+hundred years ago.
+
+In respect of clothes, people were much better off.  They dressed far
+more warmly than we do, and used a great deal of fur, not only for
+trimming or out-door wear, but to line their clothes in winter.  But
+their furs comprised much commoner and cheaper skins than we use;
+ordinary people wore lambskins, with the fur of cats, hares, and
+squirrels.  Such furs as ermine and miniver were kept for the great
+people; for there were curious rules and laws about dress in those days.
+It was not, as it is now, a question of what you could afford to buy,
+but of what rank you were.  You could not wear ermine or samite unless
+you were an earl at the lowest; nor must you sleep on a feather bed
+unless you were a knight; nor might you eat your dinner from a metal
+plate, if you were not a gentleman.  Such notions may sound ridiculous
+to us; but they were serious earnest, six hundred years ago.  We should
+not like to find that we had to go before a magistrate and pay a fine,
+if our shoes were a trifle too long, or our trimmings an inch too wide.
+But in the time of which I am writing, this was an every-day affair.
+
+In the house, women wore an odd sort of head-dress called a wimple,
+which came down to the eyebrows, and was fastened by pins above the
+ears.  When they went out of doors, they tied on a fur or woollen hood
+above it.  The gown was very loose, and had no particular waist; the
+sleeves were excessively wide and long.  But when women were at work,
+they had a way of tucking up their dresses at the bottom, so as to keep
+them out of the perpetual slop of the stone or brick floor.  Rich people
+put rushes on their floors except in winter, and as these were only
+moved once a year, all manner of unspeakable abominations were harboured
+underneath.  In this respect the poor were the best off, since they
+could have their brick floors as clean as they chose: as, even yet,
+there are points in which they have the advantage of richer people--if
+they only knew it!
+
+But our picture is not quite finished yet.  Look out of the little
+window, and notice what you see.  Can this be Sunday afternoon in a good
+street? for every shop is open, and in the doorways stand young men
+calling out to the passers-by to come in and look at their goods.  "What
+lack you? what lack you?"
+
+"Cherry ripe!"
+
+"Buy my fine kerchiefs!"
+
+"Any thimbles would you, maids?"  Such cries as these ring on every
+side.
+
+Yes, it is Sunday afternoon--"the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the
+Lord."  But look where you will, you can see no rest.  Everywhere the
+rich are at play, and the poor are at work.  What does this mean?
+
+Think seriously of it, friends; for it will be no light matter if
+England return to such ways as these again, and there are plenty of
+people who are trying to bring them back.  What it means is that if
+holiness be lost from the Sabbath, rest will never stay behind.  Play
+for the few means work for the many.  And let play get its head in, and
+work will soon follow.
+
+If you want to walk the road of happiness, and to arrive at the home of
+heaven, you must follow after God, for any other guide will lead in the
+opposite direction.  The people who tell you that religion is a gloomy
+thing are always the people who have not any themselves.  And things are
+very different, according to whether you look at them from inside or
+outside.  How can you tell what there may be inside a house, so long as
+all you know of it is walking past a shut door?
+
+Ever since Adam hid himself from the presence of the Lord God among the
+trees of the garden, men and women have been prone to fancy that God
+likes best to see them unhappy.  The old heathen always used to suppose
+that their gods were jealous of them, and they were afraid to be too
+happy, lest the gods should be vexed!  But the real God "takes pleasure
+in the prosperity of His people," and "godliness hath the promise of the
+life that now is, as well as of that which is to come."
+
+What language are our three friends talking?  It sounds very odd.  It is
+English, and yet it is not.  Yes, it is what learned men call "Middle
+English"--because it stands midway between the very oldest English, or
+Anglo-saxon, and the modern English which we speak now.  It is about as
+much like our English as broad Scotch is.  A few words and expressions
+through the story will give an idea how different it is; but if I were
+to write exactly as they would have spoken, nobody would understand it
+now.
+
+And how do they live inside this tiny house?  Well, in some respects, in
+a poorer and meaner way than the very poorest would live now.  Look up,
+and you will see that there is no chimney, but the smoke finds its way
+out through a hole above the fire, and when it is wet the rain comes in
+and puts the fire out.  They know nothing about candles, but burn long
+shafts of pine-wood instead.  There are such things as wax candles,
+indeed, but they are only used in church; nobody dreams of burning them
+in houses.  And there are lamps, but they are made of gold and silver,
+and are never seen except in the big castles.  There is no crockery; and
+metal plates, as I said, are only for the grand people.  The middle
+classes use wooden trenchers--our friends have two--hollowed out to keep
+the gravy in; and the poor have no plates at all beyond a cake of bread.
+Their drinking-glasses are just cows' horns, with the tip cut off and a
+wooden bottom put in.  They have also a few wooden bowls, and one
+precious brass pot; half a dozen knives, rough unwieldy things, and four
+wooden spoons; one horn spoon is kept for best.  Forks?  Oh dear, no;
+nobody knows anything about forks, except a pitchfork.  Table-linen?
+No, nor body-linen; those luxuries are only in the big castles.  Let us
+watch Avice's mother as she sets the table for four-hours, remembering
+that they are going to have company, and therefore will try to make
+things a little more comfortable than usual.
+
+In the first place, there will be a table to set.  If they were alone,
+they would use one or two of the high stools.  But Agnes goes out into
+the little yard, and brings back two boards and a couple of trestles,
+which she sets up in the middle of the room.  This is the table--rather
+a rickety affair, you may say; and it will be quite as well that nobody
+should lean his elbow on it.  Next, she puts on the boards four of the
+cows' horns, and the two trenchers, with one bowl.  She then serves out
+a knife and spoon for each of four people, putting the horn spoon for
+the Bishop.  Her preparations are now complete, with the addition of one
+thing which is never forgotten--a very large wooden salt-cellar, which
+she puts almost at one end, for where that stands is a matter of
+importance.  Great people--and the Bishop is a very great person--must
+sit above the salt, and small insignificant folks are put below.  We may
+also notice that the Bishop is honoured with a horn and a trencher to
+himself.  This is an unusual distinction.  Husband and wife always share
+the same plate, and other relatives very frequently.  As to Avice, we
+see that nothing is set for her.  The child will share her mother's
+spoon and horn; and if the Bishop brings his chaplain, he will have a
+spoon and horn for himself, but will eat off the Grandmother's plate.
+
+Our picture is finished, and now the story may begin.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO.
+
+HOW THINGS CHANGED.
+
+"Open the door, Avice, quick!" said Agnes, as a rap came upon it.
+"Yonder, methinks, must be the holy Bishop."
+
+Avice ran to the door, and opened it, to find two priests standing on
+the threshold.  They entered, the foremost with a smile to the child,
+after which he held up his hand, saying, "Christ save all here!"  Then
+he held out his hand, which both Agnes and her mother kissed, and sat
+down on one of the forms by the table.  Every priest was then looked
+upon as a most holy person.  Some of them were a long way from holiness.
+But there were some who really deserved the title, and few deserved it
+so well as Robert Copley, Bishop of Lincoln, whom, according to the
+fashion of that day, people called Grosteste, or Great-head.
+
+For surnames were then only just beginning to grow, and very few people
+had them--I mean, very few had received any from their fathers.  They
+had, therefore, to bear some name given to them.  Sometimes a man was
+named from his father--he was Robert John-son, or John Wil-son.
+Sometimes it was from his trade; he was Robert the Smith, or John the
+Carter.  Sometimes it was from the place where he lived; he was Robert
+at the Mill, or John by the Brook.  But sometimes it was from something
+about himself, either as concerned his person or his ways; he was Robert
+Red-nose, or John White-hood, or William Turn-again.  This is the way in
+which all surnames have grown.  Now, as Bishop Copley's soul lodged well
+(as Queen Elizabeth said of Lord Bacon), in a large head and massive
+brow, people took to calling him Great-head or Grosteste; and it is as
+Bishop Grosteste, not as Bishop Copley, that he has been known down to
+the present day.
+
+I have said that he was a peculiar man.  He was much more peculiar, at
+the time when he lived, than he would have been if he had lived now.
+Saint Peter told bishops that they were not to be lords over God's
+heritage, but to be ensamples to the flock; but when Bishop Grosteste
+lived, most bishops were very great lords, and very poor examples.
+Bishops, and clergymen too, were fond of going about in gay clothes of
+all colours, playing at games, and even drinking at ale-houses.  Many of
+them were positively not respectable men.  But Bishop Grosteste and his
+chaplain were dressed in plain black, and they were of the few who walk
+not according to the course of this world.  To them, "I like" was of no
+moment, and "I ought" was of great importance.  And what other people
+would say, or what other people might be going to do, was a matter of no
+consequence whatever.
+
+Such men are scarce in this follow-my-leader world.  If you are so
+fortunate as to be related to one of them, take care you make much of
+him, for you may go a long way before you see another.  With most people
+"I like" comes up at the top; and "What will people say?" comes next,
+and often pretty near; but "What does God tell me to do?" is a long way
+off, and sometimes so far off that they never come to it at all!
+
+Bishop Grosteste lived in one of the darkest days of Christianity.
+Thick, dense ignorance, of all kinds, overwhelmed the masses of the
+people.  Books were worth their weight in gold, there were so few of
+them; and still worse, very few could read them.  When we know that
+there was a law by which a man who had been sentenced to death could
+claim pardon if he were able to read one verse of a Psalm, it gives us
+an idea how very little people can have known, and what a precious thing
+learning was held to be.  Even the clergy were not much wiser than the
+rest, and they were generally the best educated of any.  Most of them
+could just get through the services, not so much by reading them as by
+knowing what they had to say; and they often made very queer blunders
+between words which were nearly alike.  A few, here and there, were
+really learned men; and Bishop Grosteste was one of them.  He had
+learned "all that Europe could furnish," and he knew so much that the
+poor ignorant people about him fancied he must have obtained his
+knowledge by magic.  But far better than all this, Bishop Grosteste was
+taught of God.  His soul was like a plant which grew up towards the
+light, and Jesus Christ was his Sun.
+
+In this day of full, brilliant Gospel light, we can hardly imagine the
+state of affairs then.  Perhaps one fact will help us to do it as well
+as many.  In every house there was an image set up before which all
+prayers were said.  Sometimes it was a crucifix, sometimes an image of
+the Virgin Mary, sometimes of some other saint--for the saints, male and
+female, were a great crowd.  But the crucifix or the Virgin Mary were
+generally preferred; and why?  Because the poor worshippers fancied that
+the crucifix had more power than the image of a saint, and that the
+Virgin was able to look after her own candle!  A torch, or in later
+times a candle, was always burning in front of the image; and of course
+if the image could keep it alight, it was much less trouble to the
+worshipper!
+
+But had they no common sense in those days?  Well, really, it looks
+sometimes as if they had not.  When men once turn aside from God's Word,
+it is impossible to say to what folly or wickedness they will not go.
+"The entrance of Thy words giveth light; yea, it giveth understanding
+unto the simple."
+
+Very few bishops then living would have taken any notice of the humble
+foster-sister who lived in that tiny house, and worked: for her living--
+she and her daughter being both widows, and the child dependent on them.
+It was hard work then, as now, for such people to get along.  It is
+often really harder for them than for the very poor.
+
+The guests being now come, Agnes dished up the four-hours--if that can
+be called dishing up when there were no dishes!  She lifted a great pan
+off the hook where it hung over the fire--for it must be remembered
+there were no bars, and pans had to be hung over the fire by a handle
+like that of a kettle--and poured out into the bowl a quantity of soup.
+She then served out a cake of white bread to the Bishop--a rare dainty--
+black bread to the chaplain and her mother, and hard oat-cake for
+herself and Avice.  They then began to eat, after the Bishop had made
+the sign of the crossover the bowl, which answered to saying grace; all
+the spoons going into the one bowl, the Bishop being respectfully
+allowed to help himself first.
+
+"And how goes it now with thee, my sister Muriel?" asked the Bishop.
+
+The Grandmother gave a little shake of her head, though she answered
+cheerfully enough.
+
+"Things go pretty well, holy Father, I thank you.  Work is off and on,
+as it may be; but we manage to keep a roof over our heads, as you see,
+and we can even find a bowl of broth and a wheat-cake for our friends.
+The Lord be praised for all His mercies!"
+
+"Well said, my sister.  And what do you intend to make of your little
+maid here?"
+
+"Marry, I intend to make a good worker of her," said Agnes in her turn,
+"and not an idle giggling good-for-nought, as most of the lasses be.
+She shall spin, and weave, and card, and sew, and scour, and wash, and
+bake, and brew, and churn, and cook, and not let the grass grow under
+her feet, or else I'll see!"
+
+"Truly a goodly list of duties for one maid," replied the Bishop, with a
+smile.  "And yet, good Agnes, I am about to ask if thou canst find room
+for another on the top of them."
+
+"Verily, holy Father, I am she that should work my fingers to the bone
+to pleasure you," was the hearty answer.
+
+"I thank thee, good my daughter.  How shouldst thou like to go to
+London?"
+
+"To London, Father!"  And Agnes's eyes grew as round as shillings.
+
+To go to London was then looked on as a very serious matter.  People
+made their wills before they started.  And to ignorant Agnes, who had
+never in her life been ten miles from Lincoln, it sounded almost as
+tremendous an idea as being asked to go to the moon.
+
+The Bishop smiled.  He had been to Paris and Lyons.
+
+"Ay, even to London town.  I do indeed mean it, my daughter.  There is,
+methinks, a career open to thee, which most should reckon rare
+preferment, and good success.  Ah, what is success?" he added, as if to
+himself.  "Howbeit, thou shalt hear.  The Lady Queen lacketh nurses for
+her children, and reckoning thou shouldst well fill such a place, I made
+bold to speak for thee.  And she thus far granted me, that thou shouldst
+go up to Windsor, where the King's children are kept, and she herself is
+at this present, there to talk with her, and let her see if thou art fit
+for the post.  If on further acquaintance she be pleased with thee, then
+shalt thou be made nurse to one of the children; and if not, then the
+Lady Queen will pay thy charges home.  What sayest, my daughter?--and
+thou also, Muriel, my sister?"
+
+Both Muriel and Agnes felt as if their breath were taken away.  As to
+Avice, she was listening with those large ears for which little pitchers
+are proverbial.  The Bishop had spoken quietly, as if it were an
+every-day occurrence, of this enormous change which would affect their
+whole lives.
+
+"Verily, Father, you are too good to us," said Muriel gratefully.
+
+"And I will try to thank you, Father," added Agnes, "when I get back my
+senses, and can find out whether I am on my head or my heels."
+
+The Bishop and his chaplain laughed; and Agnes, recalled to her duties
+by seeing the soup-bowl empty, jumped up and took down the spit on which
+a chicken was roasting at the fire.  Chickens were dear just then, and
+this one had cost three farthings, having been provided in honour of
+company.  People helped themselves in those days in a very rough and
+simple manner.  Agnes held the chicken on the spit to the Bishop, who
+cut from it with his own knife the part he preferred; then she served
+the chaplain and Muriel in the same way, and lastly cut some off for
+herself and Avice.  Finally, when little was left beside the carcase,
+she opened the back door, and bestowed the remains on Manikin the
+turnspit dog, a little wiry, shaggy cur, which, released from his
+labours, had sat on the hearth licking his lips while the process of
+helping went on, knowing that his reward would come at last.  Manikin
+trotted off into the yard with his treasure, and Agnes came back to the
+table and the subject.
+
+"Truly, holy Father, I know not how to thank you.  But indeed I will do
+my best to deserve your good word, should it please God so to order the
+same."
+
+"I doubt not thou wilt do well, my daughter.  Bear thou in mind that
+Christ our Lord is thy Master, and thy service must be good enough to be
+laid at His feet.  Then shalt thou well serve the Queen."
+
+Agnes was a very ignorant woman.  Bishop Grosteste, being himself a wise
+man, could not at all realise how ignorant she was.  She knew very
+little how to serve God, but she did really wish to do it.  And that,
+after all, is the great thing.  Those who have the will can surely,
+sooner or later, find out how.
+
+When the guests were gone, Agnes threw another log of wood upon the
+fire, and came and stood before it.  "Well, Mother, what must we do
+touching this matter?  Verily I am all of a tumblement.  What think
+you?"
+
+"I think, my daughter," said old Muriel calmly from the chimney-corner,
+"that we are not going to set forth for London within this next
+half-hour."
+
+"Nay, truly; yet we must think well on it."
+
+"We shall do well to sleep on it, and yet better to ask counsel of the
+Lord."
+
+"But we must go, Mother!  It would never do to offend the holy Bishop!"
+
+"Bishop Robert my brother is not he that should be angered because we
+preferred God's counsel to his.  But it may be that we shall find, after
+prayer and thought, that his counsel is God's."
+
+It was to that conclusion they came the next day.
+
+After the Bishop's departure, for a long time all was bustle and
+confusion.  Agnes declared that she did not know where her head was, nor
+sometimes whether she had any.  Avice was at the height of enjoyment.
+Old Muriel went quietly about her work, keeping at it, "doing the next
+thing," and got through more work than either.
+
+The Bishop did all he could to help them.  He found them a tenant for
+the house, lent them money--all his money not spent on real necessaries
+was either lent or given to such as needed it more than he did; and at
+last he sent them southwards on his own horses, and in charge of three
+of his servants.  From Lincoln to Windsor was a five days' journey of
+rather long stages; and when at last they reached the royal borough,
+simple--minded Agnes had begun to feel as if no further power of
+astonishment were left in her mind.
+
+"Dear, I never thought the world was so big!" she had said before they
+left Grantham; and when they arrived at Aylesbury, her cry was--"Eh,
+what a power of folks be in this world!"
+
+Old Muriel took her journey, as she did everything, calmly.  She, like
+Bishop Grosteste himself, lived too much with God to be easily startled
+or overawed by the grandeur of man.  Avice was in a state of excitement
+and delight through the whole time.
+
+They slept at a small inn; and the next morning, one of the Bishop's
+servants, who had received his orders beforehand, took up to the Castle
+a letter from his master, and waited to hear when it would please the
+Queen to see them.  He came back in an hour, with the news that the
+Queen would receive them that afternoon.
+
+Agnes was in a condition of restless flutter till the time came.  Then
+they dressed themselves in their very best, and Luke, the Bishop's
+servant, took them up to the Castle.
+
+If Agnes had felt confused at the mere idea of her interview, she found
+the reality still more overwhelming than she expected.  The first thing
+she realised was that she stood in an immense hall, surrounded by what
+seemed to her a crowd of very smart gentlemen.  Then they were led
+through passages and galleries, upstairs and downstairs, till Agnes felt
+as though she could never hope to find her way back; and at last, in a
+very handsome room, where the walls were covered with painting, and the
+furniture upholstered in silk, they came into the midst of a second
+crowd of very grand ladies.  By this time poor Agnes had quite lost her
+head; and when one of the fine ladies asked her what she wanted, she
+could only drop a succession of courtesies and look totally bewildered.
+Old Muriel managed better.
+
+"Under your leave, Madam, we have been sent for by my Lady the Queen."
+
+"Oh, are you the people who come about the nurses' place?" said the
+young lady, who looked good-natured enough.  "Follow me, and I will lead
+you to the Queen's chamber."
+
+How many more chambers can there be? was the wonder uppermost in the
+mind of Agnes.  But they walked through several more, each to her eyes
+grander than the last, painted, with stained glass windows, and
+silk-covered furniture.  At length the young lady desired them to wait a
+moment where they were, while she took in their names to the Queen.  She
+drew back a crimson silk curtain, and disappeared behind it; and the
+three--for they had never thought of leaving Avice behind--stood looking
+round them in admiring astonishment.  They were not left to wonder long.
+The curtain was drawn back, and the voice of some unseen person bade
+them go forward.
+
+They found themselves in a smaller room than the last, beautifully
+decorated.  The walls were painted a very pale blue, and large frescoes
+ornamented each side of the chamber.  Thick marble columns, highly
+polished, jutted out into the room, and in the recess between each pair
+was a marble bench, with cushions of crimson samite.  Two walnut-wood
+chairs, furnished with crimson samite cushions, stood in the middle of
+the room.  Small leaf-tables were fixed to the walls here and there.
+The floor was of waxed wood, very slippery to tread upon.  At the
+farther side of the room two doors stood open, side by side, the one
+leading to a little oratory in the turret, the other to a balcony which
+ran round the tower.  In one corner a young lady sat at an embroidery
+frame, and in another a little girl of seven years old, who deeply
+interested Avice, was feeding her pet peacock.  In one of the chairs,
+with some fancy work in her hand, sat a lady whose age was about
+twenty-eight, and whose rich dress of gold-coloured samite, and the gold
+and pearl fillet which bound her hair, divided Avice's attention with
+the child and the peacock.  Agnes was dropping flurried courtesies to
+everybody at once.  Muriel, who seemed to have a much better notion of
+what she ought to do, took a step forward, and knelt before the lady who
+sat in the chair.
+
+"Lady," she said, "we are the Queen's servants."
+
+Queen Eleanor, for it was she, looked up on them with a smile.  She was
+a beautiful brunette, lively and animated when she spoke, but with an
+easy-going, lazy expression when she did not.  It struck Avice, who had
+eyes for everything, and was making good use of them, that her Majesty
+might have brushed her rich dark hair a little smoother, and have
+fastened her diamond brooch less unevenly than she had done.
+
+It was the pleasanter side of Queen Eleanor which was being shown to
+them.  She could be very pleasant when she was pleased, and very kind
+and affable when she liked people.  But she could be very harsh and
+tyrannical to those whom she did not like; and she was one of those many
+people with whom out of sight is out of mind.  Let her see a suffering
+child, and she would be sorry and anxious to help; but a thousand
+suffering people whom she did not see, even if something which she did
+had made them suffer, were nothing at all to her.
+
+The Queen liked her visitors.  She thought old Muriel looked reliable;
+she was amused with the bewildered reverence of Agnes; and as to Avice,
+a child more or less in Windsor Castle mattered very little.  She would
+do to feed the peacock when Princess Margaret did not choose to attend
+to it.  So the bargain was soon struck; and almost before she had
+discovered what was going to happen to her, Agnes found herself the
+day-nurse of the Lord Richard, the little Prince who was then in the
+cradle.  Muriel was made mistress of the nurses; and even little Avice
+received a formal appointment as waiting-damsel on the Princess
+Margaret, the little girl who was feeding the peacock.  They were then
+dismissed from the royal presence.
+
+"Thou hadst better go with them, Margaret Bysset," said the Queen, with
+a rather amused smile, to the young lady who had brought them in;
+"otherwise they may wander about all day."
+
+Guided by Margaret Bysset, they retraced their steps through the suite
+of rooms, down winding stairs, and across the hall, to the great door
+which led into the courtyard of the Castle.
+
+"Can you find your way now?" asked the young lady.
+
+"Nay, we can but try!" said Agnes.  "Pray you, my mistress, how many
+chambers be there in this Castle?"
+
+"Truly, I have not counted them," was the laughing answer.
+
+"Eh, dear, but I marvel if I can ever find mine own when we come to
+dwell here!"
+
+"That will you soon enough.  Look, here cometh your serving-man.  Give
+you good morrow!"
+
+A few days saw them safely housed in the Castle, where two of them were
+to dwell for ten years before they returned to their own home at
+Lincoln.  But old Muriel was never to return.  She lived through half
+that time, just long enough to hear of the death of Bishop Grosteste,
+who passed away on the ninth of October 1253.  He literally died weeping
+for the sins of his age.
+
+"Christ came into the world to save souls," were the words uttered with
+his last breath.  "He who takes pains to ruin them, shall he not be
+called Antichrist?  God built the universe in six days; but it took Him
+thirty years to redeem fallen man.  The Church can never be delivered
+but by the sword from the Egyptian bondage in which the Popes hold her."
+
+The good old Bishop could say no more.  His voice broke down in tears;
+and with one great sob for England he yielded up his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE.
+
+AT UNCLE DAN'S SMITHY.
+
+The royal baby for whose benefit Muriel and Agnes had been engaged did
+not live long; but he was succeeded by his brother Prince William, and
+before he was old enough to do without nurses, a little Princess came
+upon the scene.  She was the last of the family, and she lived three
+years and a half.  After her death, the services of the nurses were no
+longer needed.  Queen Eleanor dismissed them with liberal wages and
+handsome presents, and the two who were left--Agnes and Avice--
+determined to go back to Lincoln.  Avice was now a young woman of
+twenty.
+
+But when they reached their old home, they found many changes.  The good
+Bishop Grosteste was gone, but his chaplain, Father Thomas, had looked
+after their interests, and Agnes found no difficulty in recovering her
+little property.  Happily for them, their tenants were anxious to leave
+the house, and before many days were over, they had slipped quietly back
+into the old place.
+
+There were no banks in those days.  A man's savings bank was an old
+stocking or a tin mug.  Agnes disposed of the money she had left from
+the Queen's payment, partly in the purchase of a cow, and partly in a
+stocking, which was carefully locked up in the oak chest.  They could
+live very comfortably on the produce of the cow and the garden, aided by
+what small sums they might earn in one way and another.  And so the
+years went on, until Avice in her turn married and was left a widow; but
+she had no child, and when her mother died Avice was left alone.
+
+"I can never do to live alone," she said to herself; "I must have
+somebody to love and work for."
+
+And she began to think whom she could find to live with her.  As she sat
+and span in the twilight, one name after another occurred to her mind,
+but only to be all declined with thanks.
+
+There was her neighbour next door, Annora Goldhue: she had three
+daughters.  No, none of them would do.  Joan was idle, and Amy was
+conceited, and Frethesancia had a temper.  Little Roese might have done,
+who lived with old Serena at the mill end; but old Serena could not
+spare her.  At last, as Avice broke her thread for the fourth time, she
+pushed back the stool on which she was sitting, and rose with her
+determination taken, and spoke it out--
+
+"I will go and see Aunt Filomena."
+
+Aunt Filomena lived about a mile from Lincoln, on the Newport road.  Her
+husband was a greensmith: that is to say, he worked in copper, and
+hawked his goods in the town when made.  Avice lost no time in going,
+but set out at once.
+
+As she rounded the last turn in the lane, she heard the ring of Daniel
+Greensmith's hammer on the anvil, and a few minutes' more walking
+brought her in sight of the smith himself, who laid down his hammer and
+shaded his eyes to see who was coming.
+
+"Why, Uncle Dan, don't you know me?" said Avice.
+
+"Nay, who is to know thee, when thou comes so seldom?" said old Dan,
+wiping his hot face with his apron.  "Art thou come to see me or my
+dame?"
+
+"I want to see Aunt Filomena.  Is she in, Uncle Dan?"
+
+"She's in, unless she's out," said Dan unanswerably.  "And her tongue's
+in, too.  It's at home, _that_ is.  Was this morning, anyhow.  What dost
+thou want of her?"
+
+"Well," said Avice, hesitating, "I want her advice--"
+
+"Then thou wants what thou'lt get plenty of," said Dan, with a comical
+twist of his mouth, as he turned over some long nails to find a suitable
+one.  "I'll be fain if thou'lt cart away a middling lot, for there's
+more coming my way than I've occasion for at this present."
+
+Avice laughed.  "I daresay Aunt is overworked a bit," she said.
+"Perhaps I can help her, Uncle Dan.  Folks are apt to lose their tempers
+when they are tired."
+
+"Some folks are apt to lose 'em whether they are tired or not," said the
+smith, with a shake of his grizzled head.  "I've got six lasses, and
+four on 'em takes after her.  I could manage one, and maybe I might
+tackle two; but when five on 'em gets a-top of a chap, why, he's down
+afore he knows it.  I'm a peaceable man enough if they'd take me
+peaceable.  But them five rattling tongues, that gallops faster than Sir
+Otho's charger up to the Manor--eh, I tell thee what, Avice, they do
+wear a man out!"
+
+"Poor Uncle Dan!  I should think they do.  But are all the girls at
+home?  I thought Mildred and Emma were to be bound apprentices in
+Lincoln."
+
+"Fell through wi' Mildred," said the smith.  "Didn't offer good enough;
+and She"--by which pronoun he usually designated his vixenish
+wife--"wouldn't hear on it.  Emma's bound, worse luck!  I could ha' done
+wi' Emma.  She and Bertha's the only ones as can be peaceable, like me."
+
+"Mildred's still at home, then?"
+
+"Mildred's at home yet.  And so's El'nor, and so's Susanna, and so's
+Ankaret; and every one on 'em's tongue's worse nor t'other.  And"--a
+very heavy sigh--"so's She!"
+
+Avice knew that Uncle Dan was usually a man of fewer words than this.
+For him to be thus loquacious showed very strong emotion or irritation
+of some sort.  She went round to the back door, and before she reached
+it, she heard enough to let her guess the sort of welcome she might
+expect to receive.
+
+Just inside the open door stood Aunt Filomena, a thin, red-faced,
+voluble woman, with her arms akimbo, pouring out words as fast as they
+could come; and in the yard, just outside the door, opposite to her,
+stood her daughter Ankaret, in exactly the same attitude, also thin,
+red-faced, and voluble.  The two were such precise counterparts of one
+another that Avice had hard work to keep her gravity.  Inside the house,
+Susanna and Mildred, and outside Eleanor, were acting as interested
+spectators; the funniest part of the scene being that neither of them
+listened to a word said by the other, but each ran at express speed on
+her own rails.  The youngest daughter, Bertha, was nowhere to be seen.
+
+For a minute the whole appearance of things struck Avice as so
+excessively comical that she could scarcely help laughing.  But then she
+realised how shocking it really was.  What sort of mothers, in their
+turn, could such daughters be expected to make?  She waited for a
+moment's pause, and when it occurred, which was not for some minutes,
+she said--
+
+"Aunt Filomena!"
+
+"Oh, you're there, are you?" demanded the amiable Filomena.  "You just
+thank the stars you've got no children!  If ever an honest woman were
+plagued with six good-for-nothing, sluttish, slatternly shrews of girls
+as me!  Here's that Ankaret--I've told her ten times o'er to wash the
+tubs out, and get 'em ready for the pickling, and I come to see if they
+are done, and they've never been touched, and my lady sitting upstairs
+a-making her gown fine for Sunday!  I declare, I'll--"
+
+Her intentions were drowned in an equally shrill scream from Miss
+Ankaret.  "You never told me a word--not once!  And 'tain't my place to
+scour them tubs out, neither.  It's Susanna as always--"
+
+"Then I won't!" broke in Susanna.  "And you might be ashamed of
+yourself, I should think, to put such messy work on me when Eleanor--"
+
+"You'd best let me alone!" fiercely chimed in Eleanor.
+
+"Oh dear, dear!" cried Avice, putting her hands over her ears.  "My dear
+cousins, are you going to drive each other deaf?  Why, I would rather
+scour out twenty tubs than fight over them like this!  Are you not
+Christian women?  Come, now, who is going to scour the tubs?  I will
+take one myself if you will do the others.  Who will join me?"
+
+And Avice began to turn up her sleeves in good earnest.  "No, Avice,
+don't you; you'll spoil your gown," said Eleanor, looking ashamed of her
+vehemence.  "See, I'll get them done.  Mildred, won't you help?"
+
+"Well, I don't mind if I do," was the rather lazy answer.
+
+But Ankaret and Susanna declined to touch the work, the latter cynically
+offering to lend her apron to Avice.
+
+As Avice scrubbed away, she began to regret her errand.  To be afflicted
+with such a lifelong companion as one of these lively young ladies would
+be far worse than solitude.  But where was the youngest?--the quiet
+little Bertha, who took after her peaceable father, and whom Avice had
+rarely heard to speak?  She asked Eleanor for her youngest sister.
+
+"Oh, she's somewhere," said Eleanor carelessly.
+
+"She took her work down to the brook," added Mildred.  "She's been
+crying her eyes out over Emma's going."
+
+"Ay, Emma and Bertha are the white chicks among the black," said
+Eleanor, laughing; "they'll miss each other finely, I've no doubt."
+
+Avice finished her work, returned Susanna's apron, and instead of
+requesting advice from her Aunt, went down to the brook in search of
+Bertha.  She found her sitting on a green bank, with very red eyes.
+
+"Well, my dear heart?" said Avice kindly to Bertha.
+
+The kind tone brought poor Bertha's tears back.  She could only sob
+out--"Emma's gone!"
+
+"And thou art all alone, my child," said Avice, stroking her hair.  She
+knew that loneliness in a crowd is the worst loneliness of all.  "Well,
+so am I; and mine errand this very day was to see if I could prevail on
+thy mother to grant me one of her young maids to dwell with me.  What
+sayest thou? shall I ask her for thee?"
+
+"O Cousin!  I would be so--" Bertha's ecstatic tone went no farther.  It
+was in quite a different voice that she said--"But then there's Father!
+Oh no, Cousin.  Thank you so much, but it won't do."
+
+"That will we ask Father," said Avice.
+
+"Father couldn't get on, with me and Emma both away," said Bertha, in a
+tone which she tried to make cheerful.  "He'd be quite lost--I know he
+would."
+
+"Well, but--" began Avice.
+
+"Then he'd find his self again as fast as he could," said a gruff voice,
+and they looked up in surprise to see old Dan standing behind them.
+"Thou's done well, lass.  Thou's ta'en advice o' thy own kind heart, and
+not o' other folks.  Thee take the little maid to thee, and I'll see
+thee safe out on't.  She'll be better off a deal wi' thee, and she can
+see our Emma every day then.  So dry thy eyes, little un; it'll be all
+right, thou sees."
+
+"But, Father, you'll not do without me!"
+
+"Don't thee be conceited, lass."  Old Dan was trying hard to swallow a
+lump in his throat.  "I'll see thee by nows and thens.  Thou'll be a
+deal better off.  And there's--there's El'nor."
+
+"Eleanor's not _always_ in a good temper," said Bertha doubtfully.
+
+"She's best o' t'other lot," said old Dan.  "She's none so bad, by nows
+and thens.  I shall do rarely, thou'll see.  But, Avice--dost thou think
+thou could just creep off like at th' lee-side o' th' house, wi' the
+little maid, afore She sees thee?  When thou'rt gone I'll tell her, and
+then I'll have a run for't till it's o'er.  She's better to take when
+first comings-off is done.  She'll smooth down i' th' even, as like as
+not, and then I'll send El'nor o'er wi' the little maid's bits o' gear.
+Or, if she willn't go, I can bring 'em myself, when work's done.  Let's
+get it o'er afore She finds aught out!"
+
+Avice scarcely knew whether to laugh or to be sorry.  Poor, weak,
+easy-tempered Dan!  They took his advice, and crept round by the
+lee-side of the house, under cover of the hedge.  When they were out of
+sight, with a belt of trees between, old Dan took leave of them.
+
+"Thou'll be good to the little maid, Avice," said he.  "I know thou
+will, or I'd never ha' let her go.  But she'll be better off--ay, a deal
+better off, she'll be.  She gets put upon, she does.  And being
+youngest, thou sees--I say, my lass, thou'd best call her aunt.  She's
+so much elder than thee; it'll sound better nor cousin."
+
+"Very good, Father," said Bertha.  "But, O Father! who'll stitch your
+buttons on, and comb your hair when you rest after work, and sing to
+you?  O Father, let me go back!"
+
+"Tut, tut, lass!" said old Dan, clearing his throat energetically.  "If
+one wife and four daughters cannot keep a man's buttons on, there's
+somewhat wanting somewhere.  I shall miss thy singing, I dare say; but I
+can come down, thou knows, of a holy-day even, to hear thee.  And as to
+combin'--stars knows I shall get enough o' that, and a bit o'er that I
+can spare for old Christopher next door.  He's got no wife, and only one
+lass, and she's a peaceable un.  He's a deal to be thankful for.  Now,
+God be wi' ye both.  Keep a good heart, and step out.  I'll let ye get a
+bit on afore I tell Her.  And then I'll run for't!"
+
+Avice and Bertha "stepped out" accordingly; and as nobody came after
+them, they concluded that things were tolerably smooth.  They did not
+see anybody from the smithy until two days later; and then, rather late
+in the evening--namely, about six o'clock--Dan himself made his
+appearance, with one bundle slung on a stick over his shoulder, and
+another carried like a baby.
+
+"Well!" said he, as he sat down on the settle, and wiped his hot face
+with his apron.  "Well!"
+
+"O Father, I'm so glad!" said Bertha.  "Are those my things?  How good
+of you to bring them!"
+
+"Ay, they be," said Dan emphatically.  "Take 'em and make the best thou
+can of 'em; for thou'll get no more where they came from, I can tell
+thee."
+
+"Was Aunt Filomena very much put out?" asked Avice, in a rather penitent
+tone.
+
+"She wasn't put out o' nothing," answered Dan, "except conduct becoming
+a Christian woman.  She was turned into a wild dragon, all o'er claws
+and teeth, and there was three little dragons behind her, and they was
+all a-top o' me together.  If El'nor hadn't thought better on't, and
+come and stood by me, there wouldn't have been much o' me to bring these
+here."
+
+"Then you did not run, Uncle Dan?" replied Avice.
+
+"She clutched me, lass!" responded Dan, with awful solemnity.  "And
+t'others, they had me too.  Thee try to run with a wild dragon holding
+on to thy hair, and three more to thy arms and legs--just do!  I wonder
+I'm not tore to bits--I do.  Howsome'er, here I be; and I just wish I
+could stop.  Ay, I do so!"
+
+And Dan's apron took another journey round his face.
+
+"Uncle Dan, would you like to take Bertha back?" was Avice's
+self-sacrificing suggestion.
+
+"Don't name it!" cried Dan, dropping the apron.  "Don't name it!  There
+wouldn't be an inch on her left by morning light!  I wonder there's any
+o' me.  Eh, but this world is a queer un.  Is she a good lass, Avice?"
+
+"Yes, indeed she is," said Avice.
+
+"I'm fain to hear it; and I'm fain thou's fallen on thy feet, my little
+un.  And, Avice--if thou knows of any young man as wants to go
+soldiering, and loves a fray, just thee send him o'er to th' smithy, and
+he shall ha' the pick o' th' dragons.  I hope he'll choose Ankaret.
+He'll get my blessing!"
+
+Aunt Filomena seemed to have washed her hands of her youngest daughter.
+She never came near them; and Avice thought it the better part of valour
+to keep away from the smithy.  When Emma had a holiday, which was a rare
+treat, she often spent it with her sister; and on still rarer occasions
+Eleanor paid a short visit.  But the only frequent visitor was old Uncle
+Dan, and he came whenever he could, and always seemed sorry to go home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+BABY.
+
+A very quiet life was led by Avice and Bertha.  The house work was done
+by the two in the early morning--cleaning, washing, baking, churning,
+and brewing, as they were severally needed; and in the afternoon they
+sat down to their work, enlivened either by singing or conversation.
+Sometimes both were silent, and when that was the case, unknown to
+Avice, Bertha was generally watching her features, and trying to read
+their meaning.  At length, one evening after a long silence, she
+suddenly broke the stillness with a blunt question.
+
+"Aunt, I wish you would tell me what you are thinking of when you look
+so."
+
+"How do I look, Bertha?"
+
+"As if you were looking at something which nobody could see but
+yourself.  Sometimes it seems to be something pretty, and sometimes
+something shocking; but oftener than either, something just a little
+sad, and yet as if there were pleasantness about it.  I don't know
+exactly how to describe it."
+
+"That will do.  When a woman comes to fifty years, little Bertha, there
+are plenty of things in the past of her life, which nobody can see who
+did not go through them with her.  And often those who did so cannot see
+them.  That will leave a scar upon one which makes not a scratch upon
+another."
+
+"But of what were you thinking, Aunt, if I may know?"
+
+"That thou mayest.  I fancy, when thou spakest, I was thinking--as I
+very often do--about my little Lady."
+
+"Now, if Aunt Avice is _very_ good," said Bertha insinuatingly, and with
+brightened eyes, "that means a story."
+
+Aunt Avice smiled.  "Ay, thou shalt have thy story.  Only let us be sure
+first that all is done which need be.  Cast a few more chips on the
+fire, and light another pine-torch; that is burnt nigh out.  And see thy
+bodkin on the floor--careless child!"
+
+Bertha jumped up and obeyed.  From one corner of the room, where lay a
+heap of neatly-cut faggots, she brought a handful, and threw it into the
+wide fire-place, which stretched across half one side of the room, and
+had no grate, the fire burning on the stone hearth: then from a pile of
+long pointed stakes of pitch pine, she brought one, lighted it, and set
+it in an iron frame by the fire-place made for that purpose; and lastly,
+she picked up from the brick floor an article of iron, about a foot in
+length, and nearly as thick as her little finger, which she called a
+bodkin, but which we should think very rude and clumsy indeed.
+
+"Hast thou heard, Bertha," said Avice, "that when I was young, I dwelt
+for a season in the Castle of Windsor, and my mother was nurse to some
+of the children of the Lord King that then was?  Brothers and sister
+they were of our Lord King Edward that reigns now."
+
+Bertha's eyes brightened.  She liked, as all girls do, to hear a story
+which had to do with great people.
+
+"No, Aunt Avice, I never knew that.  Won't you tell me all about it?"
+
+So Avice began and told her what we know already--how the Bishop had
+recommended Agnes to the Queen, and all about the journey, and the
+Castle, and the Queen herself.  Then she went on to tell the rest of the
+story.
+
+"We lived nigh five years," said Avice, "in the Castle of Windsor--until
+the Lord Richard was dead, and the Lord William was nearly four years
+old.  Then the Lady Queen removed to the royal Palace of Westminster,
+for the Lord King was gone over seas, and she with Earl Richard his
+brother was left to keep England.  It was in August, the year of our
+Lord 1253, at we took up our abode in Thorney Island, where the Palace
+of Westminster stands.  It is a marshy place--not over healthy, some
+folks say; but I never was ill while we dwelt there.  And it was there,
+on Saint Katherine's Day"--which is the 25th of November--"that our
+little Lady was born.  Her royal mother named her Katherine, after the
+blessed saint.  She was the loveliest babe that eye could rest on, and
+she was christened with great pomp.  And on Saint Edward's Day, when the
+Lady Queen was purified"--namely, churched--"there was such a feast as I
+never saw again while I dwelt with her.  The provisions brought in for
+that feast were fourteen wild boars, twenty-four swans, one hundred and
+thirty-five rabbits, two hundred and fifty partridges, sixteen hundred
+and fifty fowls, fifty hares, two hundred and fifty wild ducks,
+thirty-six geese, and sixty-one thousand eggs."
+
+"Only think!" cried Bertha.  "Did you get some, Aunt?"
+
+"Surely I did, child.  The Lady Queen, I told thee, was then keeper of
+England, for the Lord King was away across the seas; and good provision
+she made.  Truly, she was free-handed enough at spending.  Would she had
+been as just in the way she came by her money!"
+
+"Why, Aunt, what mean you?" asked Bertha, when Avice expressed her wish
+that Queen Eleanor had been as just in gaining money as she was liberal
+in spending it.
+
+"Why, child, taxes came heavy in those days.  When the Lord King needed
+money, he sent home to his treasurer, and it was had as he could get
+it--sometimes by selling up divers rich folks, or by levying a good sum
+from the Jews, or any way man could; not always by equal tenths or
+fifteenths, as now, which comes not nigh so heavy on one or two when it
+is equally meted out to all.  But never was there king like our late
+Lord King Henry (whom God pardon) for squeezing money out of his poor
+subjects.  Yet old folks did use to say his father King John was as ill
+or worse."
+
+Taxes, in those days, were a very different thing from what they are
+now, and were far more at the mere pleasure of the King, not only as to
+the collecting of them, but as to the spending.  Ignorant people fancy
+that this is the case still; but it is not so.  Queen Victoria has no
+money from the taxes for her private spending.  When she became Queen,
+she gave up all the land belonging to her as Queen, on condition that
+her daughters should be portioned, and that she should receive a certain
+sum of money every year, of less value than the land she gave up; so
+that it would be fraud and breach of trust in the people if they did not
+keep their word to pay the sum agreed on to the Queen.  There is so much
+misunderstanding on this point that it is worth while to mention it.
+
+"Then were the King and Queen--" Bertha began.
+
+Avice answered the half-asked question.  "They were like other folks,
+child.  They liked their own way, and tried to get it.  And they liked
+fine clothes, and great feasts, and plenty of company, and so forth; so
+they spent their money that way.  I'll not say they were bad folks,
+though they did some bad things they were folks that only thought what
+they liked, and did it; and folks that do that are sure to bring sorrow
+to themselves and others too, whether they be kings and queens or cooks
+and haymakers.  The kings and queens can do it on a larger scale; that
+is all the difference.  There are few enough that think what God likes,
+as holy Bishop Robert did, and like to do His will better than their
+own; those that do scatter happiness around them, as the other sort
+scatter misery.
+
+"Well, after a while, the Lady Queen left England, to join the Lord King
+across seas; but before she went, she took our little Lady down to the
+Castle of Windsor to the rest of the King's children.  There was first
+the Lady Beatrice, who was a maiden of twelve years; and the Lord
+Edmund, a very pretty little boy of nine; and the Lord William, who was
+but four; and there were also with them other children of different ages
+that were brought up with them; but only one was near our little Lady's
+age, or had much to do with her.  That was Alianora de Montfort,
+daughter of Earl Simon of Leicester, that bold baron that headed the
+lords against the King; and her mother was the King's own sister, the
+Lady Alianora.  She was fifteen months older than our little Lady, and
+being youngest of all, the two used to play together.  A sweet child she
+was, too; but not like my own little Lady--there never was a child like
+her."
+
+"What was she like, Aunt?"
+
+"Tell me what the angels are like in Heaven, and thou shalt hear then.
+She is an angel now--she hath been one these three-and-twenty years.
+But methinks there can have been little to change in her face when she
+blossomed into a cherub, and the wings would unfold themselves from her
+as by nature.  Never a child like her!--no, there never was one.  She
+had bright, dark eyes, wonderful eyes--eyes that her whole soul shone
+in, and that took in everything which passed.  She spoke with her eyes;
+she had no other way.  The souls of other children came out of their
+lips; but she had not spent many months in this lower world, before we
+saw with bitter apprehension and deep sorrow that God had sealed her
+sweet lips with eternal silence.  She saw all; she heard nothing; she
+could never speak.  My darling was deaf and dumb."
+
+"O Aunt Avice!"
+
+"Ay, verily at times I wondered if she were indeed an angel that God had
+sent down to earth, for whose pure lips our English was too rough, and
+our French too rude, and who could only speak the tongue they speak in
+Heaven.  She went back but whence she came; we were not fit company for
+her.  Methinks she was sent to let our earthbound hearts have one
+glimpse of that upper world; and when her work was done, her Father sent
+for her back home.
+
+"Though our little Lady could never speak, yet long before we discovered
+that, we found how lively, and earnest, and intelligent she was.  As I
+told thee, she talked with her eyes.  Nothing could be done in her
+presence but she must see and know all about it.  A little pull at my
+gown would tell me she was there; and then I turned to see the bright
+eager eyes looking into mine, and asking me as plainly as eyes could ask
+to let her know all about it.  She would never rest till she knew what
+she wanted.  Ay me, those eager eyes look into angels' faces now, and
+maybe into the face of God upon the throne."
+
+"But, Aunt, how could she understand, if she could not hear?"
+
+"God told her somehow, child.  He taught her, not we.  We did our best,
+truly; but our best would have been a poor business, if He had not taken
+her in hand.  Many a time, before I had finished trying to explain
+something to her, that quick little nod would come which meant, `I
+understand.'  Then she had certain signs for different things.  She made
+those herself; we never taught them to her.  She stroked what she liked,
+as man would stroke a dog; when she disliked anything, she made a feint
+of throwing her open hand out from her, as though she were pushing it
+away.  She had odd little ways of indicating different persons, by
+something in them which struck her.  Master Russell, the Queen's clerk,
+and keeper of the royal children, used often to have a sprig of mint or
+thyme in his lips as he went about; her sign for him was a bit of stick
+or thread between her lips.  For the priest, she tolled a bell.  For the
+Lady Beatrice, her sister, who had a little airy way of putting her head
+on one side when anything vexed her, and my Lord Henry de Lacy, who
+pouted if he were cross (which he was pretty often)--my little Lady
+imitated them exactly.  The Lady Alianora flourished her hands when she
+spoke; that was the sign for her.  For the Lord King, her father, whose
+left eyelid drooped over his eye, she pulled her own down.  She had some
+such sign for everybody.  She noticed everything."
+
+"Could she not say one word, Aunt?"
+
+"Yes, she could say three.  Verily, sometimes I marvelled if she might
+not have been taught more; but we knew not how, and how she got hold of
+those three we could never tell."
+
+"What were they?"
+
+"They were, `up,' `who,' and `poor.'"
+
+"Well, she could not do much with those."
+
+"Could she not!  `Who' asked all her questions.  It answered for who,
+what, where, when, how, and why.  She went on saying it until we
+understood and replied to the sense in which she meant it.  `Poor' was
+the word of emotion; it signified `I pity you,' `I love you,' `I am
+sorry,' and `Forgive me.'  And sometimes it meant, `Forgive him,' or
+`Don't you feel sorry for her?'  And I think `up' served for everything
+else."
+
+"Aunt," said Bertha softly, "how did you teach the little Lady to pray?
+She could tell her beads, I suppose; but would she know what they
+meant?"
+
+For Bertha, like everybody else at that time, thought it necessary to
+keep count of her prayers.  Prayer, in her eyes, was not so much
+communion with God, as it was a kind of charm which in some
+unaccountable way brought you good luck.
+
+"Beads would have meant nothing to her but toys," was Avice's reply.
+"The Lady de la Mothe taught her the holy sign"--by which Avice meant
+the cross--"and led her to the image of blessed Mary, that she might do
+it before her.  But I do not think she ever properly understood that She
+seemed only to have an idea that it was something she must do when she
+saw an image; and she did it to the statue of the Lady Queen in the
+great hall.  We could not make her understand that one image was not the
+same thing as another image.  But I fancy she had some idea--strange and
+dim it might be--of what we meant when we knelt and put our hands
+together and looked up.  I know she did it very often, without telling--
+always at night, before she slept.  But it was strange that she never
+went to the holy images at that time; she always seemed to go away from
+them, and kneel down in a corner.  And in her last illness, several
+times, coming into the chamber, I found her lying with her hands folded
+in prayer, and her eyes lifted up to Heaven.  Perhaps God Himself told
+her how to speak to Him.  One of the strangest things of all was when
+the little Lord William died; she was nearly three years old then.  She
+had been very fond of her little brother; he was nearest her age of all
+her brothers and sisters, though he was almost four years older than
+herself.  She came to me sobbing bitterly, and with her little cry of
+`Who? who?'  I took it to mean `What has happened to him?' and I was
+completely puzzled how to explain it to her.  But all at once, while I
+was beating my brains to think what I could say that would make her
+comprehend it, she told me herself what I could not tell her.  Making
+the sign for the little Lord who was dead, she laid her head upon her
+hand, and closed her eyes; and then all at once, with a peculiar grace
+that I never saw in any child but herself, she lifted her arms,
+fluttering her fingers like a bird flaps its wings, and gazing up into
+the sky, while she said, `Up! up!' in a kind of rapture.  And I could
+only smile and bow my head to the truth which God had told her."  [See
+Note 1.]
+
+"But how could she know it?" asked astonished Bertha.
+
+Avice shook her head.  "I cannot explain it; I can only tell what
+happened.  She was always very tender-hearted; she never could bear to
+see any quarrelling, or cruelty, or injustice.  If two of the children
+strove together, our little Lady would run to them with a face of deep
+distress, and take a hand of each and draw them together, as though she
+were begging them to be friends; and if she could not get them to kiss
+each other, she would kiss first one and then the other.  I missed her
+one day, and, after hunting a long while, I found her in the gallery
+before a fresco of our Lord upon the Cross.  She was stroking it and
+kissing it, with tears in her eyes; and she turned to me saying, `Poor!
+poor!'  Her eyes always filled with tears when she saw the crucifix.
+The moon used to interest her exceedingly; she would sit and watch it,
+and kiss her hand to it.  But, dear me! how the time must be getting on!
+Jump up, Bertha, and prepare supper."
+
+Bertha folded up her work and put it aside.  She drew one of the high
+stools between her aunt and herself, and put out upon it the two wooden
+trenchers and two tin mugs.  Going to a corner cupboard, Bertha brought
+out a few cakes of black bread, which she set on a smaller stool beside
+the other; and then, lifting a pan upon the fire, she threw into it some
+pieces of mutton fat.  As soon as these were melted, Bertha broke four
+eggs into them, stirring this indigestible mixture with a wooden
+thible--an article of which my northern readers will not require a
+description, but the southern must be told that it is a long flat
+instrument with which porridge is stirred.  For the eggs were not merely
+fried in the fat, but were beaten up with it, the dish when finished
+bearing the name of franche-mule.  A sprig or two of dried herbs were
+then shred into the pan, and the whole poured out, half on each of the
+trenchers.  It is more than possible that the extraordinarily rich,
+incongruous, indigestible dishes wherein our fathers delighted, may have
+something to do with the weaker digestions of their children.  The tin
+mugs were filled with weak ale from a barrel which stood under the
+ladder.  It was an oddity at that time to drink water.
+
+When supper was finished, Bertha washed the mugs and scraped the
+trenchers clean (water never touched those), putting them back in their
+places.  She had scarcely ended when a tap was heard at the door.
+
+"Step in, Hildith," said Bertha, as she opened it.  "Christ give thee a
+good even!"
+
+"The like to thee," was the answer, as a rather worn-looking woman came
+in.  "Mistress Avice, your servant.  Pray you, would you lend me the
+loan of a tinder-box?  I am but now come home from work, and am that
+weary I may scarce move; and yon careless Jaket hath let the fire out,
+and I must needs kindle the same again ere I may dress supper for the
+children."
+
+It was no wonder if Hildith looked worn out, or if she could not afford
+a tinder-box.  That precious article cost a penny, and her wages were
+fifteen pence a year.  If we do a sum to find out what that would be
+now, when money is much more plentiful, we shall find that Hildith's
+wages come to twenty-two shillings and sixpence, and the tinder-box was
+worth eighteen-pence.  We should fancy that nobody could live on such a
+sum.  But we must remember two things: first, they then did a great deal
+for themselves which we pay for; they spun and wove their own linen and
+woollen, did their own washing, brewed their own ale and cider, made
+their own butter and cheese, and physicked themselves with herbs.
+Secondly, prices were very much lower as respected the necessaries of
+life; bread was four loaves, or cakes, for a penny, of the very best
+quality; a lamb or a goose cost fourpence, eight chickens were sold for
+fivepence, and twenty-four eggs for a penny.  Clothing stuffs were dear,
+but then (as people sometimes say) they wore "for everlasting," and
+ladies of rank would send half-worn gowns to one another as very
+handsome presents.  Fourpence was a good price to give for a pair of
+shoes, and a halfpenny a day for food was a liberal allowance.
+
+"Any news to-night, Hildith?" asked Avice, as she handed her neighbour
+the tinder-box.
+
+"Well, nay; without you call it news that sheriffs man brought word this
+morrow that the Lord King had granted the half of her goods to old
+Barnaba o' the Lichgate."
+
+"She that was a Jew, and was baptised at Whitsuntide?  I am glad to hear
+that."
+
+"Ay, she.  I am not o'er sorry; she is a good neighbour, Jew though she
+be."
+
+"Then I reckon she will tarry here, and not go to dwell in the House of
+Converts in London town?"
+
+"Marry, she will so, if she have any wisdom teeth left.  I would not
+like to be carried away from all I know, up to yon big town, though they
+do say the houses be made o' gold and silver."
+
+Avice smiled, for she knew better.
+
+"Nay, Hildith, London town is built of brick and stone like Lincoln."
+
+"Is it, now?  I always heard it was made o' gold.  But aren't there a
+vast sight o' folk there? nigh upon ten thousand?"
+
+"Ay, and more."
+
+"However do they get victuals for them all?"
+
+"I got mine when I lived there," said Avice, laughing.
+
+"And don't they burn sea-coal?"
+
+"They did once; it is forbidden now."
+
+"Dirty, poisonous stuff!  I wouldn't touch it.  Well, good-even.  Shut
+the door quick, Bertha, and don't watch me out o' sight; 'tis the
+unluckiest thing man can do."
+
+And Bertha believed it, as she showed by shutting the door.
+
+Old Barnaba, the Jewess, had been dealt with tenderly.  In those days,
+if a Jew were baptised, he forfeited all he had to the King.  Most
+unaccountable it is that any Christian country should have let such a
+law exist for an hour!  These destitute Jews, however, were provided for
+in the House of Converts, in London, which stood at the bottom of
+Chancery Lane, between it and Saint Dunstan's Church.
+
+It was bed-time soon after.  Avice put away her distaff, Bertha folded
+up her sewing, and they mounted the ladder.  This was about seven
+o'clock, which was then as late an hour as it was thought that
+respectable people ought to be about.  But by two o'clock the next
+morning, Bertha was sweeping the kitchen, and Avice carding flax in the
+corner.  They did not trouble themselves about breakfast; it was an
+unknown luxury, except for people who were very old or very delicate.
+Two meals a day were the rule: dinner, at nine in the morning: supper,
+at three in the afternoon.  In those days they lived in a far harder and
+less comfortable way than we do, and they had generally better health.
+But, it must be admitted, they did not live nearly so long, and the
+infant mortality among them was very great.
+
+Morning was no time for story-telling.  The rooms had to be swept, the
+bread to be baked, the clothes to be washed, the pigs and chickens to be
+fed.  Moreover, to-day was the first day of the Michaelmas fair, and
+things must be bought in to last till Christmas.  The active work was
+finished by about seven o'clock.  Dinner was now got ready.  It
+consisted of two bowls of broth, then boiled dumplings, and lastly some
+stewed giblets.  Having made things tidy, our friends now tied on
+woollen hoods, and each taking down from the rafter-hooks a capacious
+basket, they went forth to do their shopping.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  The peculiar ways attributed to the little Princess, and
+especially this incident, are taken from an account of a real deaf and
+dumb child, published many years ago.  There was certainly something
+about the Princess which her attendants considered wonderful and
+beautiful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+THE DUMB PLAYMATES.
+
+Out into the Michaelmas fair our friends went.
+
+In these days, when fairs have quite changed their character, we cannot
+easily form a notion of what they once were.  The fair, held in every
+town four times a year, was a very important matter.  There were much
+fewer shops than now; and not only in the town, but from all the
+surrounding villages people flocked to the fair, to lay in food and
+clothes and all sorts of necessaries, enough to last till the next
+fair-day.  They had very little fresh butcher's meat, and very few
+vegetables except what they grew themselves; so they ate numbers of
+things salted which we have fresh.  Not only salt fish and salt neat,
+but salt cabbage formed a great part of their diet.  The consequence of
+all this salt food was that they suffered dreadfully from scurvy.  But
+they did not run to the doctor, for except in rare instances there was
+no doctor to run to!  All doctors were clergymen then, and there were
+very few of them.  In the large towns there were apothecaries, or
+chemists, who often prescribed for people; and there were "wise women"
+who knew a good deal about herbs, and sometimes gave good medicines,
+along with a great deal of foolish nonsense in the way of charms and all
+sorts of silly fancies.  At that time, ladies were taught a good deal
+about medicine, and a benevolent lady was often the doctor for a large
+neighbourhood.  But we are wandering away from the Michaelmas fair, and
+we must come back.
+
+The fair was a very busy scene.  In some places it was hard work to get
+along at all.  The booths were set up, not in the streets but in the
+churchyards, the market place, and on any waste space available.  And
+what with the noise of business, the hum of gossip, the shouts of
+competing sellers, and the sound of hundreds of clogs on the round
+paving-stones, it may be readily supposed that quiet was far away.
+
+Avice's first business was to lay in a stock of salt meat and salt fish.
+Very little of either was used fresh, for it was not obtainable: and
+still less would have been used so far as fish is concerned, had not the
+law, alike of the Church and of the State, compelled it to be eaten
+throughout Lent, and on every Friday in the year.  Little enough fish
+would anybody have touched then, but for that provision.  Avice bought
+half of a salted calf, which cost a shilling; five hundred herrings, at
+half-a-crown; a bushel of salt, at threepence (which was dear);
+twenty-five stock-fish, at two shillings; a quarter of a sheep, at
+fourpence; a quarter of wheat, at six shillings; a quarter of oats, at
+five shillings; half a quarter of salt cabbage, at five shillings; and
+five pounds of figs, at three-halfpence a pound.  This was her provision
+for the three months which would elapse before the Christmas fair.  She
+then went to the drapery stalls, and laid in two hoods, for herself and
+Bertha, at a shilling each; ten ells of russet, to serve for two gowns,
+at eighteen-pence the ell; twelve ells of serge, at three-halfpence the
+ell; two pairs of shoes, at fourpence each.  The russet was intended for
+their best dresses; the serge for common.  Considering how very little
+went to make a garment, it seems likely that our ancestors wove their
+stuff a good deal wider than we do.  Avice also laid in a few other
+articles of different kinds: a brass pot, which cost her 2 shillings 2
+pence; five pounds of tallow, at three-halfpence a pound, and as many of
+wax at sixpence; wax was largely used for a variety of objects.  Her
+last and costliest purchase she would have been better without.  It was
+a painted and gilded image of Saint Katherine, and cost fifteen
+shillings.  But Avice, though a good woman according to her light, had
+enjoyed very little light, and did not understand half so well as we do
+that she might go straight to God through the new and living way opened
+upon the cross, without the intervention of any mediator except the Lord
+Jesus.  She thought she must pray through a saint; and she had no idea
+of praying unless she could see something to pray to.  Her old image had
+lost much of its paint, and half an arm, and its nose was hopelessly
+damaged.  Therefore, as she must have one, poor Avice thought it best to
+buy a new one, rather than have her old saint tinkered up.  Alas for the
+gods or the mediators who require to be tinkered!
+
+By the time that these purchases were made, and the goods brought home,
+it was not far from the supper hour; and Bertha prepared that meal by
+boiling a dish of salt cabbage from one of the barrels.  This, with
+black bread and ale, made their supper.
+
+The meal was just ready, and Avice had put away her carding, having
+finished that kind of work for the day, when a rap at the door was
+followed by the lifting of the latch, and the old smith put in his head.
+
+"Any room for a man, have ye?"
+
+"Plenty for you, Uncle Dan," answered Avice heartily; and Bertha's eyes
+lighted up at the sight of her father.
+
+Dan came forward and sat down on the stool which Bertha set for him.
+
+"Has it not been a charming day?" said Avice.
+
+"Ay, it's fine weather i' Lincoln," was Dan's dry answer.  "Up at
+smithy, it's none so bad neither--yet.  Just a touch of thunder we had
+this morning,--a bit of a grumble i' th' distance like: but I've known
+worser storms a deal.  Ay, I have so!"
+
+Avice quite understood what kind of storm he meant.
+
+"How do you get on without me, Father?" asked Bertha.
+
+"Well, I'll not say I don't miss thee, my singing bird; but I'm willing,
+when it's for thy good.  I've got--let me see--two buttons left o' my
+blouse, and I think there's one o' my flannel shirt, but I'm none so
+sure.  It's rather troublesome, for sure, when there's none o' th'
+sleeves; they keep for ever a-slippin' up man's arm; but I could put up
+wi' that easy if there was nought more.  It's true I don't want to pull
+'em down while even comes."
+
+"Oh, Father, let me sew you some on!" cried Bertha.
+
+"So thou shall," said Dan.  "But I've a bit o' news for thee, lass.
+Susanna's to be wed."
+
+"With whom, Uncle?"
+
+"Michael, cartwright, at corner."
+
+"Is it a good match?"
+
+"He's got his match, and she's got hern."
+
+"They are well matched, then," said Bertha, laughing.
+
+"They're a pair," said Dan, grimly.  "He's eagre, and she's mustard; and
+they'll none mix ill--but they'll set folks' throats a-fire as meddles
+wi' 'em."
+
+Eagre is the old English word for vinegar, which is just "wine-eagre."
+It means anything sharp and acid.
+
+"Is Aunt Filomena pleased?" asked Avice.
+
+"She's never pleased wi' nothing," was the reply of her unfortunate
+husband.  "She give him lots o' sauce when he first come, and he's had
+another spoonful every time since.  He gives it her every bit as hot--I
+will say that for him.  His mother went by name o' old Maud Touchup, and
+he doth her no disfavour.  She knew how to hit folks--_she_ did.  And
+Michael's a chip o' th' old block."
+
+"A little more cabbage, Uncle Dan?"
+
+"Nay, I thank thee.  I must be going home, I reckon.  Eh, but you're
+peaceable here!  I reckon man could sleep i' this house, and not be
+waked up wi' jarring and jangling.  I tell thee what, Avice--when the
+big folks up to London town runs short o' money, I wonder they don't
+clap a bit of a tax on women's tongues!  It'd bring 'em in a tunful in a
+week, _that_ would."
+
+"How would you collect it, Uncle Dan?"
+
+"Nay, there thou floors me.  They'd best send down a chap all over steel
+to th' smithy, He'd get plucked o' pieces else.  Well, God be wi' thee,
+Avice.  God bless thee, Bertha, my lass.  Good-night!"
+
+And Uncle Dan disappeared into the darkness.  There were no street lamps
+then.  Every man had to carry his own lantern, unless he chose to run
+the risk of breaking his neck over the round stones which formed the
+streets, or the rough ground, interspersed with holes and pits, to be
+found everywhere else.
+
+They now sat down to work for the rest of the evening, Avice on the
+settle in the corner, Bertha on one of the low stools which she brought
+up to the hearth.
+
+"Lack-a-day! what have I forgot!" said Avice as Bertha drew up her stool
+and unfolded the apron she was making.  "I thought to have asked Nora
+Goldhue for a sprig of betony, or else purslane.  'Tis o'er late
+to-night, and verily I am too weary to go forth again."
+
+"Have you bad dreams, Aunt?" asked Bertha, knowing that a sprig of
+either of those herbs under the pillow was believed to drive them away.
+
+"Ay, child; they have troubled me these four nights past, but last night
+more especially."
+
+No wonder, after a supper on franche-mule!  But it never occurred to
+ignorant Avice that supper and dreams could have anything to do with one
+another.
+
+"Shall I fetch you a laurel leaf, Aunt?" suggested Bertha.
+
+"Ay, do, child; maybe that shall change the luck.  Best go ere it rain,
+too; and that will not be long, for I saw a black snail in the channel
+as we came in."
+
+Bertha tied on her hood, and ran out to the house of the next-door
+neighbour, who had a laurel in her garden, to beg a few of its leaves,
+which were supposed to bring pleasant dreams.  Having placed these under
+her aunt's bolster, she sat down again to her work, and Avice resumed
+her interrupted story.
+
+"It was in July, 1254, when our little Lady was but eight months old,
+that the Lady Queen set forth to join the Lord King in Gascony.  There
+were many ships taken up for her voyage, amongst which were the _Savoy_,
+the _Falcon_, and the _Baroness_, that was my Lord of Leicester's ship.
+In the ship wherein the Lady Queen sailed, was built a special chamber
+for her, of polished wood, for the which three hundred planks were sent
+from the forest to Portsmouth.  But so short was she of money, that she
+was compelled to bid the Treasurer to send her all the cups and basins
+which the King had of silver, and all gold in coin or leaf that could be
+found in the treasuries.  Moreover, the Jews throughout England were
+distrained for five thousand marks, for the ransom of their bodies, and
+their wives and little ones, and by sale of their lands and houses.  The
+Lady Queen took with her divers pieces of English cloth for the Lord
+King, seeing that French cloth is not nigh so good.  Some things also
+she commanded for the children, who were to tarry at Windsor during her
+absence.  Twenty-four silver spoons were made, and fifty wild animals
+taken for their provision in the park at Guildford.  Robes were served
+out, furred with hare's fur, for Edmund the King's son and Henry de
+Lacy; four robes for the gentlewomen that had the care of the children;
+and for Richard the chaplain, Master Simon de Wycumb the keeper, and
+Master Godwyn the cook: these were of sendal.  And there were robes
+furred with lamb for the King's wards, and for John the Varlet, and
+Julian the Rocker, and my mother, and me thine aunt."  [See Note 1.]
+
+Both to Avice and Bertha it seemed quite a matter of course that the
+Jews should find the money when the King wanted silk, or the King's
+children silver spoons.
+
+"But it seems to me, Aunt," suggested Bertha, "that the Lady Queen must
+have spent all her money before she started."
+
+"Oh no! the money was for the Lord King.  In truth, I know not whether
+she paid for the other things.  But I did hear that as soon as the Lord
+King knew she would come, and that she was bringing with her so much
+money and plate, he began to spend with both hands on his side of the
+sea.  He sent at once for six cloths of gold that the Queen and Lord
+Edward might offer in the churches of Bordeaux when they should arrive
+there; he commanded to be made ready a fair jewel for Saint Edward the
+Martyr, and a hundred pounds of jewels for Saint Edward the King, and
+divers more for Saint Thomas of Canterbury, all which were offered when
+he and the Queen returned home in December.  There came in also, for the
+King's coming back, many frails of figs, raisins, dates, cinnamon,
+saffron, pepper, ginger, and such like; I remember seeing them unpacked
+in Antioch Chamber, the little chamber by the garden."
+
+"And what did it all cost, Aunt?"
+
+"I know not, child.  Maybe he never paid for those.  He used to pay for
+such things as he offered to the holy saints; but for debts to
+tradesfolk and such, they took their chance.  If he had money, he might
+pay some of them or no, at his pleasure; and if not, then of course they
+had to wait.  Very sure am I that many a pound of musk came into the
+wardrobe more than was paid for.  Never was such a Prince for scents.
+He loved musk as much as he feared lightning; and there was only one
+thing in all this world that he feared more, and that was Earl Simon of
+Leicester."
+
+"And did the Lady Queen squander her money as much as the Lord King,
+Aunt Avice?"
+
+"She was every bit as bad.  She always seemed to me as if a piece of her
+brains had never grown up along with the rest.  Some folks are like
+that.  In respect of money, she was a very child.  She had not a notion
+how far it would go, and she never would wait to have it before she
+spent it.  She always appeared to think it would come somehow: and so
+far as she was concerned, it often did.  But then she never saw the
+homeless Jews who were sold up to furnish it, nor the ruined tradesmen
+who had to wait till they could not pay their own way, and were sent to
+prison for debt.  I think she might have been sorry, if she had done.  I
+suppose we should all be sorry, if we knew half the evil we do.  Well,
+God pardon her!--she is a holy sister now in the priory at Amesbury.
+And our present Queen always pays her bills, I have heard say.  Long may
+she live to do it!"
+
+"How old was the little Lady when her parents came back?"
+
+"She was just over a year old.  I waited on her from the Castle of
+Windsor to the Palace at Westminster, for the Lord King desired to
+behold her at once.  And was not he delighted with her!  I doubt if any
+of the royal children were as dear to the hearts of their parents as our
+little Lady."
+
+"Was she pleased to go?"
+
+"Pleased!--she gave nobody a bit of rest," said Avice, laughing.  "All
+the journey through she was plucking at my gown, and pointing, first
+here and then there, with her little cry of `Who? who?'--for she talked
+at fifteen months old as much as she ever spoke in this world.  And
+before I could find out what she meant, she was pointing to something
+else, and `Who? who?' came over again."
+
+"Did you know then that she was deaf and dumb?"
+
+"No! nor for months after.  Truly, all her ways were so bright, and her
+sense so keen, and her laugh so gladsome, that we never thought of such
+a thing till she was long past the age when children ought to speak
+freely.  But when at last they began to fear the truth, it was indeed a
+bitter grief to the royal parents.  The Lord King offered five cloths of
+gold at Saint Edward's shrine for the children, and specially for our
+little Lady, in hope that the Divine mercy might be moved to have pity
+on her.  But it was all in vain."
+
+Avice sighed heavily.  And there was no one to say to her, O woman,
+_small_ is thy faith!  Was the Divine mercy no greater, which called
+that little child, unspotted by the world, to tread the fair streets of
+the Golden City, than the mercy thou wouldst have had instead of it?
+
+"It was not long after that," said Avice, slowly drawing out the white
+threads, "that our little Lady's health began to fail.  The heats of
+summer tried her sorely.  She drooped like a flower that had no water.
+Instead of playing with the other children, her gleeful laughter ringing
+through the galleries of the Castle, she would come and draw her little
+velvet stool to my side, and lay her head on my knee as if she were very
+weary.  And when I looked down and smiled on her, instead of smiling
+back as she was wont, the great, dark wistful eyes used to look up so
+sadly, as if her soul were looking out of them.  Oh, it was pitiful to
+read the dear eyes, when they said, `I am suffering: cannot you help
+me?'  And as time went on, they said it more and more.  When the Lady
+Queen came to Windsor, she was shocked at the sad change in our darling
+little Lady.  She called in Master Thomas, the King's surgeon, and he
+advised that our little Lady should be removed from Windsor to some
+country place, where the air was good, and where she could play about in
+the fields.  So she was put in charge of Emma La Despenser, Lady de
+Saint John, at her manor of Swallowfield, in Berkshire.  Of course I
+went with her, and her cousin Alianora also, who was her favourite
+playfellow, for it was not thought well she should be entirely with
+older people, though I cannot say I was sorry to get rid of all those
+rough boys.  The Lord King also commanded that a kid should be taken in
+the forest, as small and fair as might be found, for our little Lady to
+play with: and very fond she was of it.  It was a lovely little
+creature, and grew as tame as possible.  Ah, they were much alike, those
+two little things!--both young, soft, lovely--and both dumb!  I
+marvelled sometimes whether they understood each other."
+
+"And did she not get any better, Aunt?"
+
+"Yes; for a time she did.  The country air and food and quiet did seem
+to do her good.  She was so much better that she came back to Windsor
+for the winter.  But it was not thought well by Master Thomas that she
+should go to London to be present at the great rejoicings that were made
+when the Lady Alianora came from Spain--our Queen that now is, the holy
+saints bless her!  There were grand doings then, I heard; all London
+city was curtained in her honour, and processions in every church, and
+all superbly decorated; and the poor fed in the halls at Westminster, as
+many as could get in; and the Lord King presented a silver cross to the
+Abbey, and a golden plate of an ounce weight.  Oh, it must have been a
+grand sight!"
+
+"Who paid that bill, I wonder?" said Bertha, laughing.
+
+"Bless thee, child! how do I know?  That was the autumn when there was
+so much ado here at Lincoln touching the crucifixion of the blessed
+Hugh, son of Beatrice, by the wicked Jews; one hundred and more of them
+were brought to prison, first here, and afterwards at Westminster; and
+when eighteen had been hanged, the rest were graciously allowed to buy
+their lives for eighteen thousand marks.  I daresay some of that went
+for it--that is, for as much of it as got paid for."
+
+That sum would now be equal to about two hundred and sixteen thousand
+pounds.  It never came into Avice's head to doubt whether the Jews had
+crucified little Hugh.  Such charges were often enough brought against
+them--when those who called themselves Christians wanted an excuse for
+stealing the jews' money and jewels.  There has never been a single
+instance, in this country or any other, in which the charge has been
+proved true.  A further favourite accusation, that the Jews used the
+blood of Christian children to make their passover cakes, we know cannot
+have been true; for the Bible tells us that the Jews were strictly
+forbidden to eat blood.  But what absurdity might not be expected from
+people who had no Bibles, and of whom not more than one in a thousand
+could have read it if he had had one?  Are we half thankful enough for
+our own privileges?
+
+"Well!" continued Avice, "after this, the Lady Alianora came down to
+Windsor with the Lady Queen, and our little Lady and she took to one
+another wonderfully.  And, indeed, it was little wonder, for she was as
+fair and sweet a damsel as ever tripped over the greensward.  Our little
+Lady would run to her whenever she sat down in the children's chamber,
+and say, `Up! up!' and then the Lady Alianora would smile sweetly, and
+take her up beside her in the great state chair; and there they sat with
+their arms round one another, looking like two doves with their heads
+resting on each other's necks.  And the Lady Alianora once said to me,
+stroking our little Lady's hair--`I hope, Avice, thou givest her plenty
+of love.  She can understand that, if she cannot anything else.'  Ay,
+and so she could!  She fretted sadly over the Lady Alianora when she
+went away from Windsor.  I think she and the little kid were more than
+ever together after that.  I have found them both asleep in a corner of
+the chamber, resting on one another."
+
+"Was she fond of pets?"
+
+"She loved her little kid dearly, and she seemed to go to it for
+comfort.  I do not know that she cared much for anything else.  The Lord
+King was the one for gathering curious animals of all sorts.  He had
+three leopards in the Tower, and a white bear, which was taken out to
+fish in the Thames; the citizens of London paid fourpence a day for the
+bear's keep, and had to provide a chain and muzzle for it, and a long
+cord whereby it was held when it fished in the river.  And in the
+spring, before the coming of the Lady Alianora, the French King sent to
+our King a very strange animal, the like of which was never before seen
+in England.  It had scarcely any eyes that man might see, and not much
+of a tail; but great flapping ears, and a most extraordinary thing that
+hung down from its face, which was hollow like a pipe, and it could pick
+things up with it as thou dost with thy fingers.  It was a lead-coloured
+beast, and ate nought but grass and hay and such-like; it would not
+touch meat nor bones.  They called it an oliphant,"--for so in old time
+people pronounced elephant.  "The Lord King thought great things of this
+beast, and had a house built for it, forty feet by twenty, at the Tower:
+it was made very strong, lest the great beast should break forth and
+slay men.  But truly it seemed a peaceable beast enough.
+
+"We dwelt much more quietly at Windsor, after the departure of the Lady
+Alianora.  For she went abroad with the Lord Edward her husband, and
+Mariot de Ferrars, who had been there for some time--she went too; and
+the King's son Edmund was made King of Sicily by the Lord Pope, and he
+and the other lads were taken away; our little Lady and her cousin
+Alianora de Montfort alone were left.  The King thought to have made
+money by Edmund his son; he was a fair boy in very truth, and he clad
+him in Sicilian dress, which was graceful and comely, and showed him
+before the Parliament, entreating them to find him money for all these
+many expenses.  But the Parliament did not seem disposed to pay for
+seeing the young Lord.  And, indeed, I heard Master Russell say that he
+thought it strange the Lord King should make merchandise of his child's
+beauty, as though he were some curious animal to be seen in a show.  But
+Bertha, my dear heart! we clean forgot to buy any honey--and only this
+minute is it come to my mind.  Tie on thine hood, I pray thee, and run
+to the druggist for an half-dozen pounds."
+
+When it is understood that honey held in Avice's cookery and diet the
+place that sugar does in ours, the necessity of remedying this mistake
+will be seen.  Sugar was much too expensive to be used by any but
+wealthy people.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  The robes provided for Agnes and Avice are the sole imaginary
+items in this account.  Sendal was a very thin silk.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX.
+
+SET FREE.
+
+As Bertha came back, carefully carrying her jar of honey, she heard a
+considerable tumult in a street on her left hand, which led to the Jews'
+quarter of the city.  In every town, the Jews were shut up in a
+particular part of it; and after London itself, the towns in which the
+greatest number of Jews lived were Lincoln, York, Norwich, Oxford, and
+Northampton.  Since the dreadful persecution arising from the (real or
+supposed) murder of little Hugh, Lincoln had been comparatively quiet
+from such tumults; and Bertha was too young to know anything about it
+but from hearsay.  Wondering if some fresh commotion was going to arise,
+and anxious to be safe at home before it should begin, Bertha quickened
+her steps.  There were only three more streets to cross, one of which
+was a dark, narrow alley leading directly to the Jews' quarter.  As
+Bertha crossed this, she heard a low, frightened call upon her name, and
+a slight figure crept out and crouched at her feet.
+
+"O Bertha!" said a girl's voice, broken by sobs and terrified catching
+of the breath, "you are kind-hearted; I know you are.  You saved a
+little dog that the dreadful boys were trying to drown.  Will you save
+me, though I am beneath a dog in your eyes?"
+
+"Who are you?" asked astonished Bertha.
+
+"I am Hester, the daughter of Aaron," said the girl, "and there is a
+deadly raid on our quarter.  They accuse us of poisoning the wells.  O
+Bertha, they lay things to us that we never do!  Save me, for my
+womanhood's sake!"
+
+"Poor soul!" said Bertha, looking down at her.  "Come with me to Aunt
+Avice.  Maybe she will let thee tarry in some corner till the tumult is
+over.  I dare say it will not be much."
+
+Bertha spoke in rather contemptuous tones, though they were not wanting
+in pity.  Everybody in England was taught then to rank Jews with vermin,
+and to look upon it as a weakness to show them any kindness.
+
+The two girls reached the door in safety, and Bertha led Hester in.
+
+"Aunt Avice," she said, "there is a commotion in the Jews' quarter, and
+here is a Jew maiden that wants to know if we will shelter her.  I
+suppose she won't hurt us much, will she?"
+
+The very breath of a Jew was fancied to be poisonous.
+
+Avice looked at the pale, terrified face and trembling limbs of the girl
+who had cast herself on her mercy.
+
+"Well, I dare say not," said she; "at any rate, we will risk it.
+Perhaps the good Lord may not be very angry; or if He is, we must say
+more prayers, and beg our Lady Saint Mary to intercede for us.  Come in,
+child."
+
+Poor Avice! she knew no better.  She had been taught that the Lord who
+died for her was a stern, angry Judge, and that all the mercy rested in
+His human mother.  And the Jews had crucified Christ; so, thought Avice,
+He must hate them!  Perhaps, of such Christians as she was, He may have
+said again, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."
+
+Hester came in quietly.  "May God bless you!" she said.  "I will try not
+to breathe on you, for I know what you think."  And she sat down meekly
+on the floor, in a dark corner, not daring to offer any help, lest they
+should imagine that she would pollute anything she touched.  Avice threw
+her a cake of bread, as she might have done to a dog; and Hester knew
+that it was a kinder act than she would have received from most of the
+Christians around.
+
+It was not yet quite bed-time, and Bertha sat down again to her work,
+begging her aunt to finish the tale.  They took no notice of Hester.
+
+"It is almost finished," said Avice; "there is little more to tell.  The
+winter got over, but spring was scarcely begun when our little Lady's
+health failed again.  The Lord King was so anxious about her that when
+he was away from Windsor, he bade the Lady Queen to send him a special
+messenger with news of her; and so delighted was he to hear of her
+recovery, that he commanded a good robe to be given to the messenger,
+and offered in thanksgiving an image of silver, wrought in the form of a
+woman, to the shrine of Saint Edward."
+
+"Then she did recover, Aunt?"
+
+"Ay, but it was for the last time.  As the summer drew on, the Lady
+Queen asked Master Thomas if he thought it well that the little Lady
+should have change again, and be sent into the country till the heat was
+past.  Master Thomas answered that he reckoned it unnecessary; and the
+Lady Queen departed, well pleased.  But as soon as she was gone, Master
+Thomas said to me and Julian the Rocker, who were tending our little
+Lady--`She will have a better change than to Swallowfield.'  Quoth
+Julian, `Say you so, Master?  Whither do you purpose sending her?'  And
+he said, looking sadly on the child, `_I_ purpose sending her?  Truly,
+good Julian, no whither.  But ere long time be over, the Lord our God
+will send for her, by that angel that taketh no bribe to delay execution
+of His mandate.'  And then I knew his meaning: my darling was to die.
+But the steps of the angel were very slow.  The autumn came and went.
+The child seemed languid and dull, and the Lord King offered a chasuble
+of samite to the blessed Edmund of Pontigny at his altar at Canterbury."
+
+Edmund Rich, afterwards called Saint Edmund of Pontigny, was an
+Archbishop of Canterbury with whom King Henry the Third was at variance
+as long as he lived, much in the same way as Henry the Second had been
+with Becket.  Now he was dead, a banished man, the Pope had declared him
+a saint, and King Henry made humble offerings at his shrine.  But it is
+amusing to find that with respect to this offering at least, his
+Majesty's instructions were to buy the samite of the lowest price that
+could be found!
+
+"It was all of no use," pursued Avice sorrowfully.  "The angel had
+received the mandate.  Great feasts were held at Easter--there were
+twenty beeves and fifty muttons, fifteen hundred pullets, and six
+hundred shillings' worth of bread, beside many other things--but ere one
+month was over, the feast became a fast.  When Saint Philip's day dawned
+my darling lay in her bed, with her fair eyes turned up to heaven and
+her hands folded in prayer; and who may know what she said to God, or
+yet more what He told to her?  She had never been taught to pray; she
+could not be."  Avice's only notion of prayer was repeating a form of
+words, and keeping time by a string of beads.  "But I shall always think
+that in some way beyond our comprehension, my darling could speak to
+God.  And on the evening of the Invention of the Cross"--which is May
+3rd--"she spoke to Him in Heaven."
+
+"And did the Lady Queen sorrow very much, Aunt?  I suppose, though,
+great ladies like her would not care as much as poor people."
+
+"Wouldst thou, child?  Ah, a mother is a mother, let her be a cottager
+or a queen.  And she sorrowed so sorely that for weeks afterwards she
+lay ill, and all the skill of her physicians could avail nothing.  The
+Lord King, too, fell sick of a tertian fever, which held him many days,
+and I believe it was out of sheer anguish for his dearest child.  He
+commanded a brass image of her to be placed on the tomb, but ere it was
+finished he would have one of silver: and he gave fifty shillings a year
+to the hermit of Charing, for a priest to pray daily for her in the
+chapel of the hermitage."
+
+"Do you think she is still in Purgatory, Aunt?"
+
+Avice's religion, as taught not by the Word of God, but the traditions
+of men, led her to be doubtful on that point.  But her heart broke its
+way through the bonds.
+
+"What, my white dove? my little unspotted darling, that never wilfully
+sinned against God and holy Church?  Child, if our holy Father the Pope
+were to tell me himself that she was there, I would not believe him.  Do
+the angels go to Purgatory?  Nay, I do verily believe that, seeing her
+infirmity, Christ our Lord did all the work of salvation for her, and
+that she sings now before our Father's face."
+
+Poor Avice! she could get no further.  But we, who know God's Word, know
+that there is but one Mediator between God and man, and that He has
+offered a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the
+whole world.  Before Bertha could reply, an answer came unexpectedly
+from the dark corner.
+
+"Your God must be hard to propitiate," said the young Jewess.  "In old
+times, after the sacrifice was offered, a man was cleansed from sin.  He
+had not to cleanse himself by his own pain."
+
+"But you are heathens," said Avice, feeling it a condescension to argue
+with a Jew.  "Our religion is better than yours."
+
+"How?" was Hester's rejoinder.
+
+"Because we have been redeemed by our Lord, who died to save us from
+Hell."
+
+"It does not sound like it.  Then why had the little child to go there?"
+
+"She did not go there!  She went to Purgatory."
+
+"She went to pain, if I understood you rightly.  Why did your Messiah
+not finish His work, and keep her from going to pain altogether?"
+
+"I cannot answer such wicked questions," said Avice.  "The Church
+teaches that God's love purifies His servants in Purgatory, and as soon
+as their souls are clean they go to Heaven."
+
+"Our God does better for us than that," was Hester's quiet answer.  "I
+do not know what `the Church' is.  But I suppose God's love is not for
+Gentiles."
+
+And she relapsed into silence.  Avice sat and span--and thought.  Both
+of them were terribly ignorant; but Avice did honestly desire to know
+God's will, and such truth as was in Hester's words troubled her.  And
+as she thought, other words came to her, heard years ago from the pulpit
+of Lincoln Cathedral, and from the long silent lips of that holy Bishop
+Grosteste whom she so deeply revered.
+
+"By leaning on Christ," the Bishop had said, "every true Christian rises
+into true life, peace, and joy; he lives in His life, sees light in His
+light, is invigorated with His warmth, grows in His strength, and
+leaning on the Beloved, his soul ascends upwards."
+
+Then for those who loved Christ and leaned on Him, either He must be
+with them in Purgatory, and then it would be no pain at all: or--Avice
+shrank from the alternative that perhaps there was no Purgatory at all!
+It is hard to break free from trammels in which we have been held all
+our lives.  Bertha did not follow the course of her aunt's thoughts, and
+wondered why she said, after long silence--
+
+"Methinks God is enough for His people, wherever they are."
+
+Hester also had been thinking, and to as much purpose.
+
+"It is written, `In His name shall the Gentiles trust,'" she said.  "And
+I think, if He can love any Gentiles, it must be kindly and merciful
+hearts like yours.  Perhaps the Great Sacrifice--the Messiah Himself--is
+meant for all men.  But I think He will finish His work, and not leave
+it incomplete, as your priests seem to teach you."
+
+"He will do right by all men, if thou meanest our Lord," replied Avice
+gently.  "And what was right for all, and best for us, we shall know
+when we come to Him."
+
+"Then the little Lady knows it now, Aunt," said Bertha.
+
+"Yes, my darling knows it now.  It may be she knows why her ears were
+sealed and her tongue bound, now that they are unstopped and loosed.
+And I marvel if any voice in the choirs of the angels can be so sweet as
+hers."
+
+There was silence for a little while.  Then Hester rose.
+
+"I thank you very much for your kindness," she said.  "I think I might
+go home.  The streets seem quieter now."
+
+Avice went to the door, unlatched it, and peered forth into the night.
+
+"Yes, there seems to be no noise in the direction of your quarter now.
+I think you will be safe.  But if you feel uneasy, you can stay the
+night in this room."
+
+"No, thank you," replied Hester gratefully.  "I will not put you to that
+trouble.  You have been very good to me.  May the God of Israel bless
+you with His blessing!"
+
+Avice felt rather uneasy.  She had always been taught that Jews were
+idolaters, and she never imagined that Hester could be blessing her in
+the name of the one living God.  She fancied that the benediction of
+some horrible Moloch was being called down upon her, and feared it
+accordingly.  But she answered kindly, for unkindness was not in her
+simple, loving, God-fearing heart.  Hester went out, and latched the
+door behind her.
+
+"I am glad she is gone," said Bertha.  "I could not feel easy while she
+was here.  Yet I could not have borne to turn her away without asking
+you if you would take her in, Aunt.  I hope we have not done wrong!"
+
+"I hope not, indeed," replied Avice, who was not quite easy in her own
+mind.  "I wonder why it should be so wrong to pity Jews, and be kind to
+them.  It looks so different from all the other commands of our Lord."
+
+Different, most truly!  But such causes for wonder were likely to be
+frequent enough, so long as men allowed the traditions of men to run
+alongside of the infallible Word of God.  And they had no power to read
+for themselves the real words of the Lord, who had said to the father of
+all Israel, "I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that
+curseth thee."
+
+But the influx of visitors was not yet over for the evening.  Hester had
+not been gone long when a heavy rap came on the door.  "Come in!" said
+Avice; and Uncle Dan appeared.
+
+"Could you spare a chap a seat, think ye?" said he.  "I've come for a
+bit o' peace.  We've got thunder and lightning and rain up at smithy.
+_She's_ thunder, and Ankaret's lightning, and Mildred's rain, for she's
+a-crying: and El'nor and me, we 're wet to skin wi' 't.  So I put my cap
+on and come here to dry me a bit."
+
+Avice laughed.  "You're always welcome, Uncle Dan, and I hope you know
+it," said she.  "Bertha, my maid, bake a short-cake for thy father.
+There's enough warmth in the bake-stone."
+
+"Short-cake's good," said Dan, "and I'll not go to deny it; but love and
+peace are better.  _She_ can make short-cake wi' anybody.  It's th' jam
+as goes wi' 't I don't like.  She makes it so tart, and puts so much on.
+Sure, if th' fire had went out, she'd easy bake a cake a-top of her
+temper, and so could Ankaret.  Eh, it do take a whole hive of honey to
+sweeten some folks.  There's bees in this world, for sure; but there's
+many a waps to every bee."
+
+In the present day, "waps" is considered a vulgar way of pronouncing the
+word; but it was correct English at the time of which I am writing.
+"Wasp" is really the corrupt pronunciation.  In the same way, they said
+"claps" where we say "clasp."
+
+"Uncle Dan, I sometimes wonder you do not come and live in Lincoln
+town."
+
+"Dost thee?  Think I haven't noise enough at smithy?"
+
+"But I think you would make friends here, and find things pleasanter."
+
+"Humph!" said Dan, laying a big, hardened brown hand upon each knee.
+"It's very plain to me, Avice, as thou doesn't live in a house where
+everything thou does turns to hot water.  Me make friends!  She'd have
+'em out o' th' door afore they'd a-comed in.  They wouldn't come twice,
+I reckon--nay, they wouldn't.  That'd be end o' my friend-making,
+Avice."
+
+"Uncle Dan, did you never try standing up to Aunt Filomena?"
+
+"Did I never try _what_?  Ay did I, once--and got knocked down as sharp
+as ninepins.  Standing up!  I'd love to see thee try it.  Thou'd not be
+right end up long."
+
+Bertha had gone upstairs, or Avice perhaps would not have spoken so
+plainly, though the smith himself had long passed the stage of ignoring
+his wife's failings in the presence of her children.
+
+"But you are her husband, Uncle Dan."
+
+"I reckon I know that Thou would, if she'd plucked as much of thy
+whiskers out as she has o' mine."
+
+"And wives ought to obey their husbands."
+
+"Thou'll oblige me by saying so to her, and I'll be glad to know if thou
+likes what thou'll get."
+
+"You think she cannot be managed?"
+
+"Not without one o' th' archangels likes to try.  I'll not say he
+wouldn't be sorry at after."
+
+"It does seem such a sad way for you to live," said Avice pityingly.
+
+"Grin and bide," said Dan philosophically.  "Grin while I can, and bide
+when I can't.  But I'll tell thee what--if some o' them fighting fellows
+as goes up and down a-seeking for adventures, 'd just take off Ankaret
+and Mildred--well, I don't know about El'nor: she's been better o'
+late--and eh, but they couldn't take Her, or I'd ha' given th' cow into
+th' bargain, and been right glad on't--and if me and Emma and Bertha
+could ha' settled down in a bit of a house somewhere, and been
+peaceable--Come, it's no use hankering over things as can't be.
+Elsewise, I'd ha' said a chap might ha' had a bit o' comfort then."
+
+"Uncle Dan, did you ever think of praying that Aunt Filomena might have
+a better temper?"
+
+"Ever think of what?" demanded Uncle Dan in the biggest capitals ever
+seen on a placard.
+
+"You know God could make her temper sweet, Uncle Dan."
+
+"Thou believes that, does thou?"
+
+"I do."
+
+"So will I--when I see't.  I reckon I'll have a rare capful o' larks by
+th' sky falling, first."
+
+"The sky will fall some day, my son," said the voice of Father Thomas,
+behind Dan.  His soft rap had been unheard through Dan's bass voice, and
+he had entered unperceived.
+
+"Well, Father, you should know the rights on't," was Dan's answer, with
+a pull at his hair.  "Being a priest, I reckon you're good friends wi'
+th' angels and th' sky and all that sort of thing; but--I ask your
+pardon, Father, but She belongs to t'other lot, and you don't know her.
+Eh, you don't, so!"
+
+And with an ominous shake of his head, and a good-night to Avice and
+Bertha, Dan passed out.
+
+"Our Lord could do that, Father?" said Avice softly.
+
+"Certainly, my daughter.  `Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He--in
+the heavens, and in the earth, and in the sea, and in all depths.'"
+
+Father Thomas had not much of the Bible--only one Gospel and a Book of
+Psalms--but what he had he studied well.  And one page of the Word of
+God will do a great deal for a man, with the Spirit of God to bring it
+home to a willing ear and a loving heart.
+
+"May I pray for Aunt Filomena?  I am so sorry for Uncle Dan.  He is not
+a bad man, and she makes his home unbearable."
+
+"God forgive her!  By all means pray for both."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+A SPICE OF PHILOSOPHY.
+
+While Dan was thus detailing his troubles in Avice's kitchen, his
+daughter Emma was finishing her day's work.  She was apprenticed to an
+embroideress; for all kinds of embroidery were in much greater use then
+than now.  There was no sort of trimming except embroidery and fur;
+there were no such things as printed cottons; and not only ladies'
+dresses, but gentlemen's, and all kinds of curtains and hangings, were
+very largely ornamented with the needle.  Mrs De la Laund kept eighteen
+apprentices, and they worked in a long, narrow room with windows at each
+end--not glass windows, but just square openings, where light, wind, and
+rain or snow, came in together.  It was about half an hour before it
+would be time to stop work.  There was no clock in the room, and there
+were only three in all Lincoln.  Clocks such as we have were then
+unknown.  They had but two measures of time--the clepsydra, or
+water-clock, and the sun-dial.  When a man had neither of these, he
+employed all kinds of ingenious expedients for guessing what time it
+was, if the day were cloudy and the sun not to be seen.  King Alfred had
+invented the plan, long before, of having candles to burn a certain
+time; the monks knew how long it took to repeat certain psalms.  Mrs De
+la Laund stopped work when the cathedral bell tolled for vespers--that
+is, at four o'clock.
+
+"You look tired, Antigone," said Emma to her nearest neighbour, a pale
+girl of eighteen.
+
+"Tired?  Of course I'm tired," was the unpromising answer.  "Where's the
+good?  One must go on."
+
+"She does not like the work," said the girl on the other side of her.
+
+"Do you?" responded Antigone, turning to her.
+
+The girl gave a little laugh.  "I don't think whether I like it or not,"
+she said.  "I like being taught what will get me a living some day."
+
+"I hate it!" answered Antigone.  "Why should I have to work for my
+living, when Lady Margaret, up at the Castle, never needs to put a
+needle in or out unless she pleases?"
+
+"Nay, you're wrong there.  My sister Justina is scullion-maid at the
+Castle, and I am sure, from what she tells me, you wouldn't like to
+change with Lady Margaret."
+
+"My word, but I would!"
+
+"Why not, Sarah?" asked Emma.
+
+"Well," replied Sarah with a smile, "Antigone likes what she calls a bit
+of fun when the day's work is over; and she would not get nearly so much
+as she does, if she were in Lady Margaret's place.  She dwells in three
+chambers in her mother's tower, and never comes down except to hall,"
+(namely, to meals,) "with now and then a decorous dance under the eyes
+of the Lady Countess.  No running races on the green, nor chattering
+away to everybody, nor games--except upstairs in her own room with a few
+other young damsels.  Antigone would think she was in prison, to be used
+like that.  And learning!--why, she has to learn Latin, and surgery, and
+heraldry, and all sorts of needlework--not embroidery only; and cooking,
+and music, and I do not know what else.  How would you like it,
+Antigone?"
+
+"Well, at any rate, she has a change!" said Antigone, with some
+acerbity.
+
+"Not quite the same thing as no work at all, for which I thought you
+were longing.  And no liberty, remember."
+
+"But her gowns, Sarah, her gowns!--and her hoods, and cloaks, and
+everything else!  Did you see her last Saint Michael?  I'd have given a
+bit of liberty for that orange samite and those lovely blue slippers!"
+
+Sarah laughed and gave a little shake of her head.
+
+"I know who is fond of Hunt the Slipper," said she.  "A pretty figure an
+orange samite gown would cut after an evening of it!  I think, too, I
+would rather be free to go about on my feet than even to wear lovely
+blue slippers.  Nay, Antigone, you may depend upon it, there are less
+pleasant things in Lady Margaret's life than orange gowns and blue
+slippers.  We can have a say about our weddings, remember: but she will
+be handed over to somebody she never saw, as like as not.  I'd rather be
+as I am.  Mother says folks' lots are more even than they like to think.
+Poor folks fancy that rich ones have nothing to trouble them worth
+mention; and a sick man thinks, if he were only well, he would not mind
+being poor; and a man in prison says that if he could but be free, he
+could bear both illness and poverty.  The truth is, everybody thinks his
+own trouble the worst; and yet, if we had our neighbours' instead, nine
+times out of ten we should be glad to get back to our own.  We know the
+worst of them, and often we don't of the others.  So that is why I say,
+I'd rather be as I am."
+
+"But people look down on you!" said Antigone.
+
+"Well, let them.  _That_ won't hurt me," answered Sarah.
+
+"Sarah, I do believe you've not a bit of spirit!"
+
+"I'd rather keep my spirit for what it is good for--to help me over hard
+places and along weary bits of road.  All women have those at times.
+Mother says--"
+
+"Where's the good of quoting old women?  They have outlived their
+youth."
+
+"Well, at any rate they lived through it, and some of them picked up a
+bit of wisdom by the way."
+
+"You may keep your musty wisdom to yourself!  I want none of it!" said
+Antigone, scornfully.
+
+"I want all I can get," quietly responded Sarah.  "Mother says (if you
+don't care for it, Emma may) that discontent is the worst companion a
+girl can have for making everything look miserable.  You'll be a deal
+happier, she says, with a dry crust and a good will to it, than with a
+roast ox and a complaining temper."
+
+"Ay, that's true!" said Emma, with a sigh.
+
+"Poor Emma!" laughed Antigone.  "You get enough of it, don't you, at the
+smithy?"
+
+"I would rather not talk over my mother and sisters, if you please,"
+returned Emma.
+
+"Oh, you don't need to take airs, my lady.  I know!"
+
+"Come, let Emma be," said Sarah.  "Let's keep our tempers, if we haven't
+much else.  There's the vesper bell!"
+
+Antigone's work was not likely to be improved by the hasty huddled-up
+style in which it was folded, while Sarah and Emma shook theirs straight
+and carefully avoided creases.  They had then to give it in to the
+mistress, who stood at one end of the room, putting all away in a large
+coffer.  When the last girl had given in her work, Mrs De la Laund
+called for silence.
+
+"On Thursday next," said she, "I shall give you a holiday after dinner.
+The Queen comes to Lincoln on that day, and I wish to give as many as
+are good girls the chance of seeing her enter.  But I shall expect to
+have no creased work like Antigone's; nor split and frayed like
+Geneveva's; nor dirtied like Femiana's.  Now you may go."
+
+They had odd names for girls in those days.  Among the nobles and
+gentry, most were like ours; young ladies of rank were Alice, Cicely,
+Margaret, Joan, Isabel, Emma, or Agnes: a strange name being the
+exception.  But among working women the odd names were then the rule:
+they were Yngeleis, Sabelina, Orenge, Pimma, Cinelote, Argentella, and
+very many more of the same high-sounding kind.
+
+When the apprentices left the work-room, they were free to do as they
+liked till seven o'clock, when they must all re-assemble there, answer
+to their names called over, repeat some prayers after Mrs de la Laund,
+and go to bed in a large loft at the top of the house.  Characters came
+out on these occasions.  The majority showed themselves thoughtless and
+giddy: they went to run races on the green, and to play games--the
+better disposed only among themselves: but the wild, adventurous spirits
+soon joined a lot of idle youths as unsteady as themselves, with whom
+they spent the evening in rough play, loud laughter, and not altogether
+decorous joking.  The little group of sensible girls kept away from such
+scenes.  Most of them went to see their friends, if within reasonable
+distance; those who had none at hand sat or walked quietly together.
+Emma and Sarah were among these.
+
+Any person entering Lincoln on the following Wednesday would plainly
+have seen that the town was preparing for some great event.  Every house
+draped itself in some kind of hanging--the rich in coarse silk, the
+poorer in bunting or whatever they could get.  The iron hoops here and
+there built into the walls for that purpose, held long pine-sticks, to
+be lighted as torches after dark; and they would need careful watching,
+for a great deal of the city was built of wood, and if a spark lighted
+on the walls, a serious fire might be the result.  In the numerous
+balconies which projected from the better class of houses sat ladies
+dressed in their handsomest garments on the Thursday morning, and below
+in the street stood men and women packed tightly into a crowd, waiting
+for the Queen to arrive.  There was not much room in a mediaeval street,
+and the sheriffs did not find it easy to keep a clear passage for the
+royal train.  As to keeping any passage for the traffic, that would have
+been considered quite unnecessary.  There was not much to keep it for;
+and what there was could go round by back streets, just as well as not.
+Few people set any value on time in the Middle Ages.
+
+Queen Alianora was expected to arrive about twelve o'clock.  She was not
+the Queen Eleanor of whom we read at the beginning of the story (for
+Alianora is only one of the old ways of spelling Eleanor), but her
+daughter-in-law, the Lady Alianora who had been a friend to the dumb
+Princess.  She was a Spanish lady, and was one of the best and loveliest
+Queens who ever reigned in England.  Goodness and beauty are not always
+found in company--perhaps I might say, not often; but they went together
+with her.  She was a Spanish blonde--which means that her hair was a
+bright shade of golden--neither flaxen nor red; and that her eyes were a
+deep, deep blue--the blue of a southern sky, such as we rarely if ever
+see in an English one.  Her complexion was fair and rosy, her features
+regular and beautiful, her figure extremely elegant and
+well-proportioned.  The crowd, though good-humoured, was beginning to
+get tired, when she came at last.
+
+The Queen, who was not quite thirty years of age, rode on a white horse,
+whose scarlet saddle-cloth was embroidered with golden lions and roses,
+and which was led by Garcia, her Spanish Master of the Horse.  She was
+dressed in green samite, trimmed with ermine.  On her left hand rode the
+Earl of Lincoln, on her right, her eldest surviving son, the little
+Prince Alphonso, who was only seven years old.  He died at the age of
+eleven.  After the Queen rode her two damsels, Aubrey de Caumpeden and
+Ermetrude; and after them and the officers of the household came a
+number of lesser people, the mob of sight-seers closing in and following
+them up the street.  [See Note 1.] Her Majesty rode up Steephill to the
+Castle, where the Countess of Lincoln and her daughter Lady Margaret--a
+girl of about fifteen--received her just inside the gate.  Then the mob
+cheered, the Queen looked back with a smile and a bow, the Almoner flung
+a handful of silver pennies among them, the portcullis was hauled down,
+and the sight was over.
+
+As Emma turned back from the Castle gate, she met her father and her
+sister Eleanor, who, like her, had been sight-seeing.
+
+"Well!" said Dan, "did thou see her?"
+
+"Oh yes, beautifully!" answered Emma.  "Isn't she handsome, Father?"
+
+"`Handsome is as handsome does,'" philosophically returned Dan.  "Some
+folks looks mighty handsome as doesn't do even to it.  _She_ was just
+like a pictur' when I wed her.  Ay, she was, so!--Where art thou going,
+Emma?"
+
+"I thought of looking in on Aunt Avice, Father.  Are you and Eleanor
+coming, too?"
+
+"I'm not," said Eleanor.  "I'm going to see Laurentia atte Gate.  So
+I'll wish you good even."
+
+She kept straight on, while Dan and Emma turned off for Avice's house.
+It was not surprising that they found nobody at home but the turnspit
+dog, who was sufficiently familiar with both to wag a welcome; but
+somebody sat in the chimney-corner who was not at home, but was a
+visitor like themselves.  When the door was unlatched, Father Thomas
+closed the book he had been reading and looked up.
+
+"Good even, Father," said Dan to the priest.  "I reckon you've come o'
+th' same errand as us."
+
+"What is that, my son?"
+
+Dan sat down on the form, and put a big hand on each knee.
+
+"Well, it's some'at like t' shepherd comin' to count t' sheep, to see
+'at none of 'em's missin'," said he.  "It's so easy to get lost of a big
+moor full o' pits and quagmires.  And this world's some'at like it.--Ah,
+Avice! folks as goes a-sight-seeing mun expect to find things of a
+mixtur' when they gets home."
+
+"A very pleasant mixture, Uncle," said Avice.  "Pray you of your
+blessing, holy Father."
+
+Father Thomas gave it, and Bertha, stooping down, kissed Dan on his
+broad wrinkled forehead.
+
+"Did thou get a penny?" asked Dan.
+
+"I got two!" cried Bertha, triumphantly.  "And Aunt Avice got one.  Did
+you, Father?"
+
+"Nay, lass--none o' my luck!  Silver pennies and such knows better nor
+to come my way.  Nor they'd better not, without they'll come right
+number.  I should get tore to bits if I went home wi' one, as like as
+not.  She 'd want it, and so 'd Ankaret, and so 'd Susanna, and so 'd
+Mildred; and atwixt 'em all it 'd get broke i' pieces, and _so_ should
+I.  And see thou, it's made i' quarters, and I amn't, so it wouldn't
+come so convenient to me."
+
+Pennies were then made with a deep cross cut athwart them, so that they
+were easily broken, when wanted, into halfpence and farthings, for there
+were no separate ones coined.
+
+"Father, have one of mine!" cried Bertha at the beginning of Dan's
+answer.
+
+"Nay, nay, lass!  Keep thy bit o' silver--or if thou wants to give it,
+let Emma have it.  She'll outlive it; I shouldn't."
+
+The silver penny changed hands at once.  Avice had meanwhile been
+hanging up her hood and cloak, and she now proceeded to prepare a dish
+of eggs, foreseeing company to supper.  Supper was exceedingly early
+to-day, as it was scarcely three o'clock; but dinner had been equally
+so, for nobody wanted to be busy when the Queen came.  A large dish of
+"eggs and butter" was speedily on the table--the "buttered eggs" of the
+north of England, which are, I believe, identical with the "scrambled
+eggs" of the United States.  The party sat down to supper, Father Thomas
+being served with a trencher to himself.
+
+"And how dost thou get along wi' thy Missis, my lass?" said Dan to his
+daughter.
+
+"Oh, things is very pleasant as yet, Father," answered Emma with a
+smile.  "There's a mixture, as you said just now.  Some's decent lasses
+enough; and some's foolish; and some's middlin'.  There's most of the
+middlin' ones."
+
+"I'm fain to hear it," said Dan.  "Lasses is so foolish, I should ha'
+thought there 'd be most o' that lot.  So 's lads too.  Eh, it's a queer
+world, this un: mortal queer!  But I asked thee how thou got on with thy
+Missis, and thou tells me o' th' lasses.  Never _did_ know a woman
+answer straight off.  Ask most on 'em how far it is to Newark, and
+they'll answer you that t' wind was west as they come fro' Barling."
+
+"Thou hast not a good opinion of women, my son," said Father Thomas, who
+looked much amused.
+
+"I've seen too much on 'em!" responded Dan, conclusively.  "I've got a
+wife and six lasses."
+
+"Bertha, we'd better mind our ways!" said Emma, laughing.
+
+"Nay, it's none you," was Dan's comment.  "You're middlin' decent, you
+two.  So's Avice; and so's old Christopher's Regina.  I know of ne'er
+another, without it 's t' cat--and she scratches like t' rest when she's
+put out.  There _is_ other decent 'uns, happen.  They haven't come my
+way yet."
+
+"Why, Father!" cried Emma.  "Think who you're lumping together--the Lady
+Queen, and my Lady at the Castle, and Lady Margaret, and the Dean's
+sister, and--"
+
+"Thou'll be out o' breath, if thou reckons all thou'st heard tell of,"
+said Dan.  "There's cats o' different sorts, child: some's snowy white
+(when so be they've none been i' th' ash-hole), and some's tabby, and
+some's black as iron; but they all scrats.  Women's like 'em.--You're
+wise men, you parsons and such, as have nought to do wi' 'em.  Old
+Christopher, my neighbour up at smithy, he says weddin's like a bag full
+o' snakes wi' one eel amongst 'em: you ha' to put your hand in, and you
+may get th' eel.  But if you dunna--why you've got to do t' best you can
+wi' one o' t' other lot.  If you'll keep your hand out of the bag you'll
+stand best chance of not getting bit."
+
+"It is a pity thou wert not a monk, my son," said the priest, whose
+gravity seemed hard to keep.
+
+"Ay, it is!" was Dan's hearty response.  "I'm alway fain to pass a
+nunnery.  Says I to myself, There's a bonnie lot o' snakes safe tied up
+out o' folkses' way.  They'll never fly at nobody no more.  I'm fain for
+the men as hasn't got 'em.  Ay, I am!"
+
+Avice and her young cousins laughed.
+
+"Do you think they never fly at one another, Uncle Dan?" asked the
+former.
+
+"Let 'em!" returned that gentleman with much cordiality.  "A man gets a
+bit o' peace then.  It's t' only time he does.  If they'd just go and
+make a reg'lar end o' one another! but they never does,"--and the smith
+pushed away his trencher with a sigh.  "Well!  I reckon I mun be going.
+She gave me while four:--and I'm feared o' vesper bell ringing afore I
+can get home.  There'll be more bells nor one, if so.  God be wi' ye,
+lasses!  Good even, Father."
+
+And the door was shut on the unhappy husband of the delightful Filomena.
+Emma took leave soon after, and Bertha went with her, to see another
+friend before she returned to her employer's house.  Avice and the
+priest were left alone.  For a few minutes both were silent; but perhaps
+their thoughts were not very unlike.
+
+"I wish, under your leave, Father," said Avice at length, "that somebody
+would say a word to Aunt Filomena.  I am afraid both she and Uncle Dan
+are very ignorant.  Truly, so am I: and it should be some one who knows
+better.  I doubt if he quite means all he says; but he thinks too ill of
+women,--and indeed, with five such as he has at home, who can wonder at
+it?  He has no peace from morning to night; and he is naturally a man
+who loves peace and quiet--as you are yourself, holy Father, unless I
+mistake."
+
+"Thou art not mistaken, my daughter," said Father Thomas.  Something
+inside him was giving him a sharp prick or two.  Did he love quiet too
+much, so as to interfere with his duties to his fellow-men?  And then
+something else inside the priest's heart rose up, as it were, to press
+down the question, and bid the questioner be silent.
+
+"I wonder," said Avice, innocently, quite unaware of the course of her
+companion's thoughts, "whether, if Aunt Filomena knew her duty better,
+she might not give poor Uncle Dan a little more rest.  He is good, in
+his way, and as far as he knows.  I wish I knew more!  But then," Avice
+concluded, with a little laugh, "I am only a woman."
+
+"Yet thou art evidently one of the few whom he likes and respects,"
+answered the priest.  "Be it thine, my daughter, to show him that women
+are not all of an evil sort.  Do thy best, up to the light thou hast;
+and cry to God for more light, so that thou mayest know how to do
+better.  `Pour forth thy prayers to Him,' as saith the Collect for the
+First Sunday after the Epiphany, `that thou mayest know what thy duty
+requires of thee, and be able to comply with what thou knowest.'  It is
+a good prayer, and specially for them that are perplexed concerning
+their duty."  [See Note 2.]
+
+"But when one does know one's duty," asked Avice with simplicity, "it
+seems so hard to make one's self do it."
+
+"Didst thou ever yet do that?  Daughter, dost thou believe in the Holy
+Ghost?"
+
+Avice's immediate answer was what would be the instinctive unthinking
+response of most professing Christians.
+
+"Why, Father, of course I do!"
+
+"Good.  What dost thou believe?"
+
+Avice was silent.  "Ah!" said the priest.  "It is easy to think we
+believe: but hard to put our faith into plain words.  If the faith were
+clearer, maybe the words would follow."
+
+"It is so difficult to get things clear and plain!" sighed poor Avice.
+
+"Have one thing clear, daughter--the way between God and thine own soul.
+Let nothing come in to block up that--however fair, howsoever dear it
+be.  And thou shalt have thy reward."
+
+"Father, is it like keeping other things clear?  The way to have the
+floor clear and clean is to sweep it every morning."
+
+"Ay, my daughter, sweep it every morning with the besom of prayer, and
+every night bear over it the torch of self-examination.  So shall the
+evil insects not make their nests there."
+
+"I don't quite know how to examine myself," said Avice.
+
+"And thou wilt err," answered Father Thomas, "if thou set about that
+work alone, with a torch lighted at the flame of thine own
+righteousness.  Light thy torch at the fire of God's altar; examine
+thyself by the light of His holy law; and do it at His feet, so that
+whatever evil thing thou mayest find thou canst take at once to Him to
+be cleansed away.  Content not thyself with brushing away thoughts, but
+go to the root of that same sin in thine own heart.  Say not, `I should
+not have spoken proudly to my neighbour'--but, `I should not be proud in
+my heart.'  Deal rather with the root that is in thee than with the
+branches of acts and words.  There are sins which only to think of is to
+do.  Take to our Lord, then, thy sins to be cleansed away; but let thine
+own thoughts dwell not so much on thy sins, thy deeds done and words
+said, but rather on thy sinfulness, the inward fount of sin in thy
+nature."
+
+"That were ugly work!" said Avice.
+
+"Ay.  I reckon thou countest not the scouring of thy floor among thine
+enjoyments.  But it is needful, my daughter: and is it no enjoyment to
+see it clean?"
+
+"Ay, that it is," admitted Avice.
+
+"I remember, my child, many years ago--thou wert but a little maid--that
+holy Bishop Robert came to sup with thy grandmother Muriel.  Tell me,
+wouldst thou have been satisfied--I say not as a little child, since
+children note not such things--but as a woman, wouldst thou have been
+satisfied to receive the holy Bishop with a dirty floor, and offer to
+him an uncleansed spoon to put to his lips?"
+
+"Oh no, Father, surely not!"
+
+"Then see, daughter, that when the Bishop of thy soul lifteth the latch
+to come in and sup with thee, He find not the soiled floor and the
+unclean vessel, and turn sorrowfully away, saying, `I thought to sup
+with My child this night, but this is no place for Me.'  Trust me, thou
+wilt lose more than He, if He close the door and depart."
+
+Avice's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"O Father, pray for me!  I cannot bear to think of that."
+
+Father Thomas rose and laid his hand on Avice's head.  His words, as
+coming from a priest, rather surprised her.
+
+"My child," he said softly, "let us pray for each other."
+
+Avice stood looking out of the window after him as he went down the
+street.
+
+"I wonder," she said to herself, "if our Lord ever turned away thus
+because Father Thomas's chamber was not clean!  He seemed to know what
+it was so well--yet how could such a good, holy man know anything about
+it?"
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  Aubrey is now a man's name only, but in the earlier hall of the
+Middle Ages it was used for both sexes.
+
+Note 2.  This collect was slightly altered from that in the Sarum
+Missal.  The form here quoted is the older one.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+AS A LITTLE CHILD.
+
+If you put a single straw into an eddying stream, other straws and bits
+of rubbish of all sorts will come and join it, until by and bye it looks
+like a little island in the midst of the water.  And we often see
+something like this going on in men's minds.  A man drops one idea,
+which another man takes up and considers, till ideas of his own come to
+join it, many things seen and heard contribute their help, and at last
+the single sentence grows into a mountain of action.
+
+Avice would have been astonished if any one had told her that she had
+made an island.  But her simple suggestion fell like an odd straw into
+the stream of Father Thomas's thoughts, and grew and grew there, until a
+few days later it led to decided action.
+
+Father Thomas was by nature a quiet man.  His temper was gentle and
+even; he hated everything like noise and bustle, far more tumult and
+quarrelling.  He was not fond even of conversation, except now and then
+as a pleasant variety to a quiet life, full of thinking and reading.  A
+man of this sort is generally an innocent man--by which I mean, a man
+who does no harm to his neighbours: and considering how many men and
+women spend their lives in doing their neighbours harm of one sort or
+another, that is a good deal to say of any man.  But there is another
+point to be taken into account, namely, what good does such a man do?
+Why, no more than a chrysalis.  And he is a poor specimen of manhood who
+is content to be of no more use in the world than a chrysalis, and to be
+as little missed when he goes out of it.  This was the point which
+troubled Father Thomas's meditations.  It was as if an angel had come
+down to him, and pointed to the old smithy on the green, and said, "What
+are you doing for those people?  God will demand an account of their
+souls, some day, and from somebody.  Are you not your brothers' keeper?"
+Hitherto Father Thomas had gone on very comfortably, with a reflection
+which serves a great many of us to excuse our pride or our laziness--I
+wish it might never be heard again from human lips--"It is not my
+place."  It was true, in one sense.  The smithy was in Newport parish,
+and Father Thomas belonged to the Cathedral.  He tried to quiet the
+angel--which was really his own conscience--with the thought that he had
+no business to intrude into somebody else's parish.  But the angel would
+not be quiet.
+
+"Will God take that answer at the Judgment Day?" he said.  "You know
+very well that the Vicar of Newport is an idle, careless man, who never
+troubles himself about the souls of his people: that so long as you
+observe the proper forms of civility, and ask his leave to visit these
+people, he will give it you in a minute, and be glad enough to think he
+is saved the trouble.  That is the truth, and you know it."
+
+Now, it is very unpleasant when one's conscience says in that blunt,
+downright, cutting way, "You know it:" and Father Thomas found it so.
+He made a few more excuses, which his conscience blew to the winds
+before they were well finished: and at last it laid hold of him, as it
+were, by the shoulders, and said, "Look there!"
+
+Father Thomas looked there--at the cross which then hung in every
+clergyman's room.  There were two lines carved on the wood at the bottom
+of this--lines which it was then not unusual to put at the bottom of
+these crosses.
+
+"This did I for thee; What dost thou for Me?"
+
+"Look there!" cried the Angel Conscience.  "Christ bore that heavy cross
+for you--bore the reviling and the agony, the spitting, the scourging,
+and the shame; and you won't face the Vicar of Newport for Him!  You
+can't walk half a mile, and ask a civil question of a man from whom you
+expect a civil answer, for love of the Man who came down all the way
+from Heaven to earth, and endured all the contradiction of sinners for
+three-and-thirty years, and faced all the malice of the devil, for the
+love of you!  Are you ashamed of yourself, Thomas de Vaux, or are you
+not?"
+
+When it reached that point, Father Thomas was painting in a book.  Books
+in those days were often ornamented with very beautiful paintings: and
+the one on which the priest was working, represented Peter denying
+Christ in the High Priest's palace.  He had just painted one side of
+Peter's hair, but the other side was still blank.  But when the Angel
+asked that question, down went the brush.
+
+"Lord, pardon Thy servant!" said Father Thomas humbly.  "I am not worthy
+to carry so much as the corner of Thy cross after Thee.  But I will take
+it up, and go forth.  Indeed, I did not know I was such a selfish, lazy,
+ease-loving man as I am!"
+
+Saint Peter had to put up with only half his hair for the rest of that
+day, for Father Thomas determinately washed and wiped his brush, threw a
+cloth over his book and painting tools to keep them from the dust, put
+on his fur cap, and went off to see the Vicar of Newport.
+
+When a man braces himself up to do something which he does not like for
+the love of God, sometimes God makes it a great deal easier and less
+disagreeable than he expected to find it.  The Vicar was just coming out
+of his door as Father Thomas reached it.
+
+"A fine day--peace be with thee!" said he.  "Whither go you, Brother?"
+
+"May I have your leave, Father, to visit one of your parishioners--the
+smith that dwells about a mile hence, on the Newport road?"
+
+"The saints love you! you may visit every man Jack of my parishioners,
+and take my blessing with you!" said the Vicar with a hearty laugh.  "I
+am not over fond of that same visiting of smiths and tailors and fellows
+of that sort.  I never know what to say to them, save hear confession,
+and they never have nought to say to me.  You are cut from another
+quality of stuff, I reckon.  Go your way, Brother Thomas, and make
+decent Christians of them if you can.  There's a she-bear lives there: I
+wish you luck with her."
+
+And with a farewell nod, the careless Vicar strode away.
+
+"And into such hands as these, men's souls are given!" thought Father
+Thomas.  "Lord, purify Thy Church!  Ah, dear old Bishop! you might well
+weep in dying."
+
+He walked on rapidly till he came within sight of the forge.  Daniel
+Greensmith's ringing blows on the anvil grew more and more distinct and
+at last the words he was singing as he worked came to the priest's ears:
+
+  "All things turn unto decay,
+  Fall, and die, and pass away.
+  Sinketh tower and droppeth wall,
+  Cloth shall fray and horse shall fall,
+  Flesh shall die and iron rust,
+  Pass and perish all things must.
+  Well I understand and say,
+  All shall die, both priest and lay;
+  And small time, for praise or blame,
+  When man dieth, lives his fame."
+
+Note.  This is translated from an old French poem, written before the
+time of the story.
+
+Father Thomas stopped beside the anvil, but the smith's back was turned,
+so that he did not see him.
+
+"A sad song, my friend--if that were all."
+
+"Eh?" said Dan, looking behind him, and then immediately throwing down
+the hammer, and giving a pull to his forelock.  Great respect was paid
+to priests at that day.  "Axe your pardon, Father!  Didn't see who it
+were."
+
+"I came to see thy wife, my son.  Shall I go forward?"
+
+"Not if you're o' my mind.  Happen you aren't."
+
+"Is she not at home?"
+
+"Oh, ay, she's at home!"
+
+The smith's tone might have meant that he could have wished she was
+somewhere else.  Father Thomas waited, till Dan flung down the hammer,
+and looked up at him.
+
+"Had ye e'er a mother?" asked he.
+
+"Ay," replied the priest.
+
+"Was she one 'at took th' andirons to you when you didn't suit her?"
+
+"Truly, no.  She was a full good and gentle woman."
+
+"And had ye e'er a sister?"
+
+"Ay; three."
+
+"Was they given to rugging your hair when they wasn't pleased?"
+
+"Not at all, my son."
+
+"Ah! you'd best go home, I reckon."
+
+"What meanest thou?" asked Father Thomas, feeling much amused at the
+very unusual style of Dan's reception.
+
+"Well!" said Dan, passing his fingers through his hair, "I mean, if
+that's the way you was fetched up, you don't know the animal you've got
+to deal with here.  There's five dragons i' that house o' mine: and each
+on 'em's got teeth and claws, and they knows how to use 'em, they does.
+If one on 'em wern't a bit better nor t'others, and did not come and
+stand by me now and then, I should ne'er ha' lived to talk to you this
+even.  Nay, I shouldn't!  Best go home, Father, while you've getten a
+coat on your back, and some hair on your head."
+
+"Is it so bad as that?"
+
+"Ah, it is!" was Dan's short but emphatic reply.
+
+"But surely, my son, thy wife would never use a man ill that meant her
+good?"
+
+"Think she'll stop to ask your meanin'?" said Dan, with a contemptuous
+grunt.  "If she's not changed sin' I come fro' dinner, she'll be a-top
+of you before you can say `mercy.'  And she's none a comfortable thing
+to have a-top of you, I give you fair warning."
+
+"How was she at supper, then?--no better?"
+
+"Supper!  I durstn't go in for no supper.  I likes hunger better nor a
+fray.  Happen El'nor 'll steal out to me with a crust after dark.  She
+does, sometimes."
+
+"And how long does it take thy wife to cool down?"
+
+Dan rubbed his forehead with his blackened hand.
+
+"I was wed to her," said he, "th' year afore the great frost, if you
+know when that were--and I'd better have been fruz, a deal.  I've had it
+mortal hot ever since.  She's had that time to cool down in, and she's
+no cooler nor she were then.  Rather, if either, t'other way on, I
+reckon."
+
+Before Father Thomas could reply, the shrillest scream that had ever met
+his ears came out of the window of the smithy.
+
+"Ankaret!" it said.  "Ankaret!  An-ka-ret!"
+
+"Ha!  That's Her!" whispered Dan, as if he were awed by the sound.
+
+An answering scream, as shrill, but scarcely so loud, came from the
+neighbouring cottage.
+
+"Whatever do you want now?" said the second shriek.
+
+"What dost thou yonder, thou slatternly minx?" returned the first.
+"I'll mash every bone of thee, if thou doesn't come in this minute!"
+
+"Then I sha'n't!" shrieked the second voice.  "Two can play at that."
+
+"Who is Ankaret?" asked Father Thomas of the smith.
+
+"She's th' eldest o' th' dragons--that's our Ank'ret," said Dan in the
+same half-frightened whisper.  "If you mun face Her, you'd best do it
+while Ank'ret's next door: both on 'em's too much for any man.  Th'
+Angel Gabriel couldn't match the pair on 'em: leastwise, if he comes
+down to axe me, _I_ sha'n't send him forward.  And don't you go and say
+I sent you, now.  For pity's sake, don't!"
+
+Father Thomas walked off, and knocked at the house door.  He was
+beginning to think that if the former part of his task had been easier
+than he expected, the latter was going to prove more difficult.  The
+door was opened by a young woman.
+
+"Good day, my daughter.  Is thy mother within?"
+
+"She's here, Father.  Pray you, come in."
+
+The priest stepped inside, and sat down on a bench.  For those times,
+the house was comfortable, and it was very clean.  The young woman
+disappeared, and presently a pair of heavy boots came clattering down
+the stairs, and Father Thomas felt pretty sure that the sweet Filomena
+herself stood before him.
+
+"Now then, what do _you_ want?" quoth she, in a tone which did not sound
+as if she were delighted to see her visitor.
+
+"My daughter, I am a priest," said Father Thomas gently; "and I am come
+to see thee for thy good."
+
+"I've got eyes!" snapped Filomena.  "Can't I see you're a priest?
+What's the good of such as you?  Fat, lazy fellows that lives on the
+best o' the land, wrung out of the hard earnings o' the poor, and never
+does a stroke o' work theirselves, but sits a-twirling o' their thumbs
+all day long.  That's what you are--the whole boiling of you!  Get you
+out o' my house, or I'll help you!"
+
+And Filomena took up a formidable-looking mop which stood in the corner,
+as if to let the priest clearly understand the sort of help which she
+proposed to give him.  She had tried this style of reception when the
+Vicar took the liberty of calling on her some months before, with the
+result that the appalled gentleman in question never ventured to renew
+his visit, and told the anecdote with many shakes of the head over "that
+she-bear up at the smithy."  She understood how to deal with a man of
+the Vicar's stamp, and she mistakenly fancied that all priests were of
+his sort.  Sadly too many of them were such lazy, careless,
+self-indulgent men, who, having just done as much work as served to
+prevent the Bishop or their consciences (when they kept any) from
+becoming troublesome, let all the rest go, and thought their duty done.
+But Father Thomas, as the Vicar had said, was cut from another kind of
+stuff.  Very sensitive to rudeness or unkindness, his feelings were not
+permitted to override his duty of perseverance: and while he dearly
+loved peace, he was not ready to buy it at the cost of something more
+valuable than itself.  While he might be slow to see his duty, yet once
+seen, it would not escape him again.
+
+The personal taunts which Filomena had launched at him he simply put
+aside as not worth an answer.  They did not apply to him.  He was
+neither fat nor lazy: and if Filomena were so ignorant as to fancy that
+the clergy were paid out of the earnings of the poor, what did it
+matter, when he knew they were not?  He went straight to the root of the
+thing.  His words were gentle enough, but his tone was one of authority.
+
+"Daughter, what an unhappy woman thou art!"
+
+Filomena's fingers slowly unclosed from the mop, which fell back into
+the corner.  Father Thomas said no more: he merely kept his eyes upon
+her.  His calm dignity took effect at last.  Her angry eyes fell before
+his unchanged look.  She was not accustomed to hear her abuse answered
+in this manner.
+
+"I just am!" she muttered with intense bitterness.
+
+"Dost thou wish to be happy?"
+
+"That's none for the like of us.  It's only for rich folks, isn't
+that,--folks as has all they wants, and a bit over."
+
+"No man has that," said Father Thomas, "except the little children who
+sit at the feet of Jesus Christ.  Become thou as a little child, and
+happiness shall come to seek thee."
+
+"Me a little child!"  There was no merriment in the laugh which
+accompanied the words.
+
+"Ay, even thou.  For `if there be a new creature in Christ, old things
+pass away; behold, all things are made new.'  [Note. 3 Corinthians five
+17, Vulgate version.] That is the very childhood, my daughter--to be
+made new.  Will thou have it?  It may be had for the asking, if it be
+asked of God by a true heart--that childhood of grace, which is meek,
+patient, gentle, loving, obedient, humble.  For it is not thou that
+canst conquer Satan, but Christ in thee, that shall first conquer thee.
+Thou in Christ--this is safety: Christ in thee--here is strength.  Seek,
+and thou shalt find.  Farewell."
+
+And without giving Filomena time to answer, Father Thomas turned away,
+and was lost in a moment behind the bushes which separated the cottage
+from the smithy.  She stood for a minute where he left her, as if she
+had been struck to stone.  The whole style of his address was to her
+something completely new, and so unlike anything she had expected that
+for once in her life she was at a loss.
+
+Filomena took up the corner of her apron and wiped her forehead, as if
+she were settling her brains into their places.
+
+"Well, that's a queer set-out!" said she at last, to nobody, for she was
+left alone.  "Me a baby!  Whatever would the fellow be at?  I reckon I
+was one once.  Eh, but it would be some queer to get back again!  What
+did he say?  `Meek, patient, gentle, loving, obedient, humble.'
+_That's_ not me!  Old Dan wouldn't think he'd picked up his own wife, if
+I were made new o' that fashion.  It didn't sound so bad, though.
+Wonder how it 'd be if I tried it!  That chap said it would make me
+happy.  I'm none that, neither, nor haven't been these many years.  Eh
+deary me! to think of me a baby!"
+
+While these extremely new ideas were seething in Filomena's mind, Father
+Thomas reached the smithy.
+
+"Glad to see you!" said Dan, laying down his hammer.  "You did not 'bide
+so long!" with a grim smile.
+
+"Long enough," said the priest shortly.
+
+"I believe you!  If you wasn't glad to get your back turned, you liked a
+tussle wi' a dragon better nor most folks.  Was she white-hot, or no-but
+[Only] red?  El'nor, she came down to me while you was in there, wi' a
+hunch o' bread and cheese, and she said it were gettin' smoother a bit
+nor it had been most part o' th' day.  What said she to you?"
+
+"Less than I said to her."
+
+"You dunnot mean she hearkened you?"
+
+"Not at first.  But in the end, she hearkened me, and made me no
+answer."
+
+Dan looked his visitor all over from head to foot.
+
+"Well!" said he, and shook his head slowly.  "Well!" and wiped his face
+with his apron, "Well!" he exclaimed a third time.  "If I'd ha' knowed!
+I'd ha' given forty marks [Note 1.] to see th' like o' that.  Eh, do
+'bide a minute, and let me take th' measure on you!  T' chap that could
+strike our Filomena dumb mun ha' come straight fro' Heaven, for there
+isn't his like o' earth!  Now, Father, do just tell a body, what did you
+say to her?"
+
+"I told her how to be happy."
+
+Dan stared.  "She wants no tellin' that, I'll go bail! she's got every
+mortal thing her own way."
+
+"That is not the way to be happy," answered the priest.  "Nay, my son,
+she is a most unhappy woman, and her face shows it.  Thou art happier
+far than she."
+
+Dan dropped the big hammer in sheer astonishment, and if Father Thomas
+had not made a rapid retreat, more than his eyes and ears would have
+told him so.
+
+"Me happier nor our Filomena!  Me!  Father, dunnot be angered wi' me,
+but either you're downright silly, or you're somewhat more nor other
+folks."
+
+"I have told thee the truth, my son.  Now, wilt thou do somewhat to help
+thy wife to be happy?  If she is happy, she will be humble and meek--
+happy, that is, in the way I mean."
+
+"I'll do aught as 'll make our Filomena meek," replied Dan, with a shake
+of his grizzled head: "but how that's going to be shaped beats me, I can
+tell you.  Mun I climb up to th' sky and stick nails into th' moon?"
+
+"Nay," said the priest with a smile.  "Thou shalt pray God to make her
+as a little child."
+
+"That's a corker, _that_ is!"  Dan picked up the hammer, and began
+meditatively to fashion a nail.  "Our Ank'ret were a babby once," said
+he, as if to himself.  "She were a bonnie un, too.  She were, so!  I
+used to sit o' th' bench at th' door of an even, wi' her on my knee,
+a-smilin' up like--eh, Father, but I'll tell you what, if them times
+could come back, it 'd be enough to make a chap think he'd getten into
+Heaven by mistake."
+
+"I trust, my son, thou wilt some day find thee in Heaven, not by
+mistake," said the priest.  "But if so, Daniel, thou must have a care to
+go the right road thither."
+
+"Which road's that, Father?"
+
+"It is a straight road, my son, and it is a narrow road.  And the door
+to it goes right through the cross whereon Jesus Christ died for thee
+and me.  Daniel, dost thou love the Lord Jesus?"
+
+"Well, you see, Father, I'm not much acquaint wi' Him.  He's a great way
+up, and I'm down here i' t' smithy."
+
+"He will come down here and abide with thee, my son, if thou wilt but
+ask Him.  So dear He loveth man, that He will come any whither on earth
+save into sin, if so be He may have man's company.  `Greater than this
+love hath no man, that he give his life for his friends.'"
+
+"Well, that stands to reason," said Dan.  "When man gives his life, he
+gives all there is of him."
+
+"Thou sayest well.  And is it hard to love man that giveth his life to
+save thine?"
+
+"I reckon it 'd be harder to help it, Father."
+
+Father Thomas turned as if to go.  "My son," said he, "wilt thou let the
+Lord Jesus say to the angels round His Throne,--`I gave all there was of
+Me for Daniel Greensmith, and he doth not love Me for it?'"
+
+The big smith had never had such an idea presented to him before.  His
+simple, transparent, child-like nature came up into his eyes, and ran
+over.  Men did not think it in those earlier ages any discredit to their
+manliness to let their hearts be seen.  Perhaps they were wiser than we
+are.
+
+"Eh, Father, but you never mean it'd be like that?" cried poor Dan.
+"Somehow, it never come real to me, like as you've put it.  Do you mean
+'at He _cares_--that it makes any matter to Him up yonder, whether old
+Dan at t' smithy loves Him or not?  I'm no-but a common smith.  There's
+hundreds just like me.  Does He really care, think you?"
+
+"Thou art a man," said the priest, "and it was for men Christ died.  And
+there is none other of thee, though there were millions like thee.  Is a
+true mother content with any babe in exchange for her own, because there
+are hundreds of babes in the world?  Nay, Daniel Greensmith, it was for
+thee the Lord Christ shed His blood on the cruel cross, and it is
+thyself whose love and thanksgivings He will miss, though all the harps
+of all the angels make music around His ear.  Shall He miss them any
+longer, my son?"
+
+Once more Dan threw aside the big hammer--this time on the inner side of
+the smithy.
+
+"Father," said he, "you've knocked me clean o'er.  I never knowed till
+now as it were real."
+
+"As a little child!" said Father Thomas to himself, as he went back to
+Lincoln.  "The road into the kingdom will be far smoother for him than
+her.  Yet the good Lord can lead them both there."
+
+The very next visit that Dan paid to Avice and Bertha showed them
+plainly that a change of some sort had come over him, and as time went
+on they saw it still more plainly.  His heart had opened to the love of
+Christ like a flower to the sunlight.  The moment that he really saw
+Him, he accepted Him.  With how many is it not the case that they do not
+love Christ because they do not know Him, and they do not know Him
+because no one of those who do puts Him plainly before them?
+
+It was much longer before Father Thomas and Avice saw any fruit of their
+prayers for Filomena.  There was so much more to undo in her case than
+in her husband's, that the growth was a great deal slower and less
+apparent.  Avice discovered that Dan's complaints were fewer, but she
+set it down entirely to the change in himself, long before she noticed
+that Filomena's voice was less sharp, and her fats of fury less
+frequent.  But at length the day came when Filomena, having been
+betrayed into a very mild copy of one of her old storms of temper, would
+suddenly catch herself up and walk determinately out of the back door
+till she grew cool: and when she came back would lay her hand upon her
+husband's shoulder, and say--
+
+"Dan, old man, I'm sorry I was bad to thee.  Forgive me!"
+
+And Dan, at first astounded beyond measure, grew to accept this
+conclusion as a matter of course, and to say--
+
+"Let her alone, and she'll come round."
+
+And then Avice's eyes were opened.
+
+One day, when she was unusually softened by the death of Susanna's baby,
+Filomena opened her heart to her niece.
+
+"Eh, Avice, it's hard work!  Nobody knows how hard, that hasn't had a
+temper as mastered 'em.  I've pretty nigh to bite my tongue through,
+many a time a day.  I wish I'd begun sooner--I do!  It'd ha' come easier
+a deal then.  But I'm trying hard, and I hope our Lord'll help me.  Thou
+does think He'll help me, doesn't thou, Avice?  I'm not too bad, am I?"
+
+"Father Thomas says, Aunt," replied Avice, "that God helps all those who
+want His help: and the worse we are, the more we want of His mercy."
+
+"That's true!" said Filomena.
+
+"And Father Thomas says," continued Avice, "that we must all go to our
+Lord just like little children, ready to take what He sees good for us,
+and telling Him all our needs of body and soul, as a child would tell
+its mother."
+
+They were walking slowly up Steephill when Avice said this.
+
+"Father Thomas has one apt scholar," said the priest's unexpected voice
+behind her.  "But it was a Greater than I, my daughter, who told His
+disciples that `whosoever did not receive the kingdom of God as a little
+child, should in no wise enter therein.'"
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Note 1.  A mark was 13 shillings 4 pence, and was the largest piece of
+money then known.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Little Lady, by Emily Sarah Holt
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