The Hearth
THE next day, Sunday, after mass, was a bustling day at Catherine's house in the Hoog Straet. The shop was now quite ready, and Cornelis and Sybrandt were to open it next day; their names were above the door; also their sign, a white lamb sucking a gilt sheep. Eli had come, and brought them some more goods from his store to give them a good start. The hearts of the parents glowed at what they were doing, and the pair themselves walked in the garden together, and agreed they were sick of their old life, and it was more pleasant to make money than waste it; they vowed to stick to business like wax. Their mother's quick and ever watchful ear overheard this resolution through an open window and she told Eli. The family supper was to include Margaret and her boy, and be a kind of inaugural feast, at which good trade advice was to flow from the elders, and good wine to be drunk to the success of the converts to Commerce from Agriculture in its unremunerative form,—wild oats. So Margaret had come over to help her mother-in-law, and also to shake off her own deep languor; and both their faces were as red as the fire. Presently in came Joan with a salad from Jorian's garden.
"He cut it for you, Margaret; you are all his chat; I shall be jealous. I told him you were to feast to-day. But oh, lass, what a sermon in the new kerk! Preaching? I never heard it till this day."
"Would I had been there then," said Margaret; "for I am dried up for want of dew from heaven."
"Why, he preacheth again this afternoon. But mayhap you are wanted here."
"Not she," said Catherine. "Come, away ye go, if y' are minded."
"Indeed," said Margaret, "methinks I should not be such a damper at table if I could come to't warm from a good sermon."
"Then you must be brisk," observed Joan. "See the folk are wending that way, and as I live, there goes the holy friar. Oh bless us and save us, Margaret; the hermit! We forgot." And this active woman bounded out of the house, and ran across the road, and stopped the friar. She returned as quickly. "There, I was bent on seeing him nigh hand."
"What said he to thee?"
"Says he, 'My daughter, I will go to him ere sunset, God willing.' The sweetest voice. But, oh, my mistresses, what thin cheeks for a young man, and great eyes, not far from your colour, Margaret."