"And you'll be proud to obey it, I'll answer for that," said Michael Garth; "you'd go to the Queen's table, if you'd to travel all the three hundred miles a-foot, with shoes, or without 'em."
"Would you do so?" inquired Harry, turning a quick searching eye upon the old man.
"The Queen's not like to ask such as me," replied Michael, with a short laugh, and he looked down on his fustian jacket and hob-nailed boots.
"But if our Sovereign were to do so, if that card of invitation had come to you in your cottage with your and your wife's names upon it, so that there could be no room for mistake; would you have thrown it aside, and let the day pass without so much as taking any notice of the gracious message from your Queen?"
"No, surely," replied both of the Garths in a breath.
"Though," Martha added, "neither of us be fit at all to appear before Her Majesty. We should feel strange enough, I take it, amongst all the lords and ladies; we'd be no fit company for them."
"But ye see, wife," observed old Michael, "if the Queen invited poor folk like we, she'd not expect much from us, she'd put up with our country ways; but, if we disobeyed her, and flouted her kindness, the Queen, mind ye, might be angered."
"And with just cause," observed Harry Maude. "Now, will you forgive me," he continued, leaning his arms on the table, and bending forward in the earnestness of his speaking, "will you forgive me if I remind you that you both have received—not merely once—but very many times, a most gracious invitation, which is also a command, from your Heavenly Sovereign, the King of kings? He bids you appear before Him at His table to partake of His Holy Supper; you know better than I can know, how you have received the gracious invitation."
Both the cottagers were taken aback by this sudden turn which the conversation had taken.
Mrs. Garth uneasily twisted about in her fingers the card which she still retained.