LITMIR.BIZ

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he mumbled somewhat about being true to the Church, and such like: but if he be an honest man, my shoes be made of Shrewsbury sweet bread. We tumbled all such practices out of the Church, above forty years gone; and what’s more, we’ll not stand to have them brought in again, though there be some may try.”

      “They will not bring any such folly in while the Queen liveth, I guess,” answered Edith.

      “Amen! but the Queen, God bless her! is seventy this year.”

      “Would you have her live for ever, Aunt Joyce?” asked Aubrey.

      “Would she could!” she answered. “As to this fellow, I know not what he’ll be at next. He told me to my face that a Papist was better than a Puritan. ‘Well, Mr. Twinham,’ said I, ‘you may be a Papist, but I am a Puritan, and there I tarry till I find somewhat better.’ ”

      “Why, Joyce!” said Lady Louvaine, smiling, “thou wert not wont to call thyself a Puritan, in the old days when thou and Bess Wolvercot used to pick a crow betwixt you over Dr. Meade’s surplice at Keswick.”

      “No, I wasn’t,” said she. “But I tell you, Lettice, there be things human nature cannot bear. A clean white surplice and Christ’s Gospel is one thing, and a purple vestment and an other Gospel is another. And if I’m to swallow the purple vestment along with the white surplice, I’ll have neither. As to old Bess, dear blessed soul! she’s in her right place, where she belongs; and if I may creep in at a corner of Heaven’s door and clean her golden sandals, I shall be thankful enough, the Lord knows.”

      “But, Mrs. Morrell! sure you never mean to say that surplices be giving place to purple vestments down this road!” cried Temperance in much horror.

      “Children,” said the old lady very solemnly, “we two, in God’s mercy, shall not live to see what is coming, but very like you will. And I tell you, all is coming back which our fathers cast forth into the Valley of Hinnom, and afore you—Temperance, Faith, and Edith—be old women, it will be set up in the court of the Temple. Ay, much if it creep not into the Holy of Holies ere those three young folks have a silver hair. The Devil is coming, children: he’s safe to be first; and in his train are the priests and the Pope. They are all coming: and you’ll have to turn them out again, as your grandfathers did. And don’t you fancy that shall be an easy task. It’ll be the hardest whereto you ever set your shoulders. God grant you win through it! There are two dangers afore you, and when I say that, I mean not the torture-chamber and the stake. Nay, I am thinking of worser dangers than those—snares wherein feet are more easily trapped, a deal. List to me, for ere many years be over, you will find that I speak truth. The lesser danger is if the Devil come to you in his black robes, and offer to buy you with that which he guesseth to be your price—and that shall not be the same for all: a golden necklace may tempt one, and a place at Court another, and a Barbary mare a third. But worse, far worse, is the danger when the Devil comes in his robes of light; when he gilds his lie with a cover of outside truth; when he quotes Scripture for his purpose, twisting it so subtilely that if the Spirit of God give you not the answer, you know not how to answer him. Remember, all you young ones, and Aubrey in especial, that no man can touch pitch and not be denied. ‘Evil communications corrupt good manners:’ and they corrupt them worst and quickest when you see not that they be evil. If you think the scales be falling from your eyes, make very sure that they are not growing on them. And you can do that only by keeping very close to God’s footstool and to God’s Word. Be sure of this: whatsoever leads you away from that Book leads you wrong. I care not what it be—King or Pope, priest or layman, blind faith or blind reason—he that neglects and sets aside the Word of God, for whatever cause, and whatever thing he would put in his place—children, his ways incline unto Hell, and his paths unto the dead. Go not after him, nor follow him. Mark my words, and see, twenty and yet more forty years hence, if they come not true.”

      Aubrey whispered to Lettice, “What made her pick out me in ‘especial,’ trow? I’m not about to handle no pitch.”

      But Hans said, with his gravest face, “I thank you, Madam,” and seemed to be thinking hard about something all the rest of the evening.

      On the Sunday morning, all went to church except the two old ladies, who could honestly plead infirmity.

      When they came out, Lettice, who was burning to speak her mind, exclaimed—“Saw you ever a parson so use himself, Aubrey? Truly I know not how to specify it—turning, and twisting, and bowing, and casting up of his hands and eyes—it well-nigh made me for to laugh!”

      “Like a merry Andrew or a cheap Jack,” laughed Aubrey.

      “I thought his sermon stranger yet,” said Hans, “nor could I see what it had to do with his text.”

      “What was his text?” inquired heedless Aubrey.

      “ ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God,’ ” repeated Hans.

      “Ay, and all he did, the hour through,” cried Lettice, “was to bid us obey the Church, and hear the Church, and not run astray after no novelties in religion. And the Church is not the Lord our God, neither is religion, so far as I see.”

      “I mind Sir Aubrey once saying,” added Hans, “that when a bride talked ever of herself, and nothing of her bridegroom, it was a very ill augury of the state of her heart.”

      “But saw you those two great candlesticks on the holy table?—what for be they?” said Lettice.

      “Oh, they be but ornaments of the church,” answered Aubrey, carelessly.

      “But we have none such in Keswick Church: and what is the good of candlesticks without candles?”

      “The candles will come,” quietly replied Hans.

      “Ah! you’re thinking of what the old gentlewoman said last night—confess, Master Sobersides!” said Aubrey.

      “I have thought much on it,” answered Hans, who walked along, carrying the ladies’ prayer-books; for the road being dirty, they had enough to do in holding up their gowns. “And I think she hath the right.”

      “Hans, I marvel how old thou wert when thou wert born!” said Aubrey.

      “I think, very like, about as old as you were,” said Hans.

      “Well, Mr. Louvaine, you are a complete young gentleman!” cried his Aunt Temperance, looking back at him. “To suffer three elder gentlewomen to trudge in the mire, and never so much as offer to hand one of them! Those were not good manners, my master, when I was a young maid—but seeing how things be changed now o’ days, maybe that has gone along with them. Come hither at once, thou vagrant, and give thine hand to thy mother, like a dutiful son as thou shouldest be, and art not.”

      “Oh, never mind me!” sighed Faith. “I have given over expecting such a thing. I am only a poor widow.”

      “Madam,” apologised Hans, very red in the face, “I do truly feel ashamed that I have no better done my duty, and I entreat you not—”

      “I was not faulting thee, lad,” said Temperance. “We have already laden thee with books; and it were too much to look for thee to do thine own duty and other folks’ too. It’s this lazy lad I want. I dare be bound he loveth better to crack jests with his cousins than to be dutiful to his old mother and aunts.”

      “Temperance, I am only thirty-nine,” said Faith in an injured voice. “I am the youngest of us three.”

      “Oh deary me! I ask your pardon,” cried Temperance, with a queer set of her lips. “Yes, Madam, you are; Edith is an old woman of forty, and I a decrepit creature of forty-five; but you are a giddy young thing of thirty-nine. I’ll try to mind it, at least till your next birthday.”

      Lettice laughed, and Aunt Temperance did not look angry, though she pulled a face at her. Edith smiled, and said pleasantly—

      “Come, Aubrey, hand thy mother on my side; I will walk with Lettice and Hans.”

      “Aunt

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