"She should have stayed in her first service," said the Vicar, shaking his head.
"But her first master had a wife," retorted my mother triumphantly.
"I had one once myself," said the Vicar.
The argument, with which his widowhood supplied the Vicar, was sound and unanswerable, and it suited well with my humour to learn from my aunt's cook-maid, and wait patiently on fate. But what avails an argument, be it ever so sound, against an empty purse? It was declared that I must seek my fortune; yet on the method of my search some difference arose.
"You must work, Simon," said my sister Lucy, who was betrothed to Justice Barnard, a young squire of good family and high repute, but mighty hard on idle vagrants, and free with the stocks for revellers.
"You must pray for guidance," said my sister Mary, who was to wed a saintly clergyman, a Prebend, too, of the Cathedral.
"There is," said I stoutly, "nothing of such matters in Betty Nasroth's prophecy."
"They are taken for granted, dear boy," said my mother gently.
The Vicar rubbed his nose.