Mrs. Gough was struck dumb by an announcement so singular.
"I have heard, and I have read, that great and pious and learned men are often to seek in little simple things, such as plain bodies have at their fingers' ends. So now, if you and I could only teach him something for all he has taught us. And, to be sure, we ought to be kind to him if we can; for oh, Betty, my woman, 'tis a poor vanity to go and despise the great, and the learned, and the sainted, because forsooth we find them out in some one little weakness, we that are all made up of weaknesses and defects. So, now, I sit me down in this very chair: so. And sit you there. Now let us, you and me, look at his room quietly, all over, and see what is wanting."
"First and foremost methinks this window should be filled with geraniums; and jessamine; and so forth. With all his learning perhaps he has to be taught, the colour of flowers and golden green leaves, with the sun shining through, how it soothes the eye and relieves the spirits; yet every woman born knows that. Then do but see this bare table! a purple cloth on that, I say."
"Which he will fling it out of the window, I say."
"Nay: for I'll embroider a cross in the middle with gold braid. Then a rose-coloured blind would not be amiss; and there must be a good mirror facing the window; but indeed, if I had my way, I'd paint these horrid walls the first thing."
"How you run on, dame! Bless your heart, you'd turn his den into a palace: he won't suffer that; he is all for self-mortification, poor simple soul."
"Oh, not all at once, I did not mean," said Mrs. Gaunt; "but by little and little, you know. We must begin with the flowers: God made them; and so to be sure he will not spurn them."
Betty began to enter into the plot. "Ay, ay," said she: "the flowers first; and so creep on. But nought will avail to make a man of him so long as he eats but of eggs and garden-stuff, like the beasts of the field, 'that to-day are, and to-morrow are cast into the oven.'"
Mrs. Gaunt smiled at this ambitious attempt of the widow to apply Scripture. Then she said, rather timidly, "Could you make his eggs into omelets? and so pound in a little meat with your small herbs; I dare say he would be none the wiser, and he so bent on high and heavenly things."
"You may take your oath of that."