* Proverbs vi. 17.
Ned took another turn up and down, stooping down now and then to pull up and throw away some straggling weed, till he found his spirit calm enough for prayer. The sailor looked up at the sky, so blue, and clear, and transparent above him, and his heart rose, in what was earnest supplication, though he could not have put it into a regular form of prayer. He wished that his deeds, and his sayings, and those of his family, might be pure, and clear, and open as heaven's sunlight; that they might be in the sight of God what they wanted to appear in the sight of men, and be honest and true in all things, like faithful servants of the Lord.
Ned's meditations were broken in upon by Bessy Peele, who came running up towards him, with a bustling, excited air.
"What's in the wind?" cried Ned.
"You must come in directly," answered Bessy. "Who do you think is in my kitchen—I knew she'd be here—but I'm sure—for Lady Barton herself to walk all the way from the Hall!"
"What has she come for?" asked Ned, knitting his brow from an uneasy apprehension of what was likely to follow.
"To hear about her son, to be sure! Lady Barton thinks no end of her son—a pretty scapegrace though he be! When he left her, she lay crying in her bed for a week—there was never a mother so fond—or so blind!"
"But what can I say?" exclaimed Ned. "I can tell nothing good of the lad!"
"You must invent something good then!" cried Bessy, in an irritated tone. "I can't have you, with your stupid bluntness, setting my landlord's wife against me, and getting my home pulled down over my head at Michaelmas, and my boy turned off, and my washing taken away!"
"I'd better not see Lady Barton," said Ned.