But through the long dull hours of sewing in Aunt Isham's dressing-room, her unfailing treasure of consolation was in repeating to herself all the teachings she had received from her grandfather—words that could never be breathed aloud in Madam Isham's house; of liberty, and the rights of the people to representation and civil justice, teachings that were drawn from writings as far asunder as Bishop Taylor's "Liberty of Prophesying," and Mr. Milton's "Areopagitica." The narrow formalism of Madam Isham's creed drove Audrey more and more to dwell on the lessons she had loved, but hardly comprehended, and in her solitude she rediscovered for herself the reasonings which had led Sir Gyles Perrient to stand with Eliot and Pym against the encroachments of the Crown. Sir Gyles' own memories ran back to the time of Elizabeth, and he had taught his grand-daughter to reverence those golden days when a wise Queen and a loyal Parliament worked together for the good of the people. He loved the Church of England as he loved the Queen and the Parliament; and Audrey had wondered and admired as she realized how he had endured to see the downfall of one cherished institution after another, still full of hope in the future of England, and of faith that the Divine Providence would bring good out of evil.
As she told one story after another of her old life, Harrison could restrain himself no longer, and chimed in.
"I wonder," he cried, "if you can remember how, a many years ago, Sir Gyles carried you up to London, and you lay for a week at our house at Highgate? I had never seen his like! He seemed to me the very model of the old courtier of the Queen in the ballad; he was so worshipful an old gentleman, and carried such a train of old servants riding with him. And if he was like the old lord in the ballad, there was a little maid with him who seemed to me to have come straight from one of the fairy tales my nurse used to tell me away in Staffordshire, when I was a child."
"I trust the little maid behaved herself fittingly," laughed Audrey.
"Right royally did she bear herself, and rated me soundly for an overgrown boy with no manners," answered Harrison. "I have endeavoured ever since to lay the schooling to heart."
"Oh, this is past bearing!" cried Audrey, turning on him. "'Tis not fair to make up such tales."
"Indeed, 'tis true," he protested, "and—and I liked the rating."
"I am afraid I was a pert poppet," she confessed; "my dear grandfather spoilt me sadly, but I knew not that I had carried my bad manners up to London town."
"Don't you mind the garden?" he urged. "There were stone figures in it, of men blowing horns, and between them a little stone basin with lilies in it."
"I do remember!" she cried. "And I tumbled in! And who pulled me out? I do protest it was you! and right generous was it of you to risk a wetting for such a peevish brat!"