Mistress Vines, while no one could bring the slightest charge against her, was by no means popular with the “elect ladies” of the colony. Mindful of her household, over which she presided with affectionate dignity, and truly loving and honoring her husband, she was little inclined to countenance any course which should create any interest outside of the sacred relation of the family.
Thoughtful as she was tender, judicious as she was affectionate, she was doubly happy in a husband worthy of all reverence and duty, to whom she could refer all abstruse and vexing questions of opinion, and whose decisions were to her wifely mind the wisest and best.
Mistress Bonyton, the mother of John, was in the habit of collecting the principal women of the colony at her house on the Saturday of every week, for the purposes of prayer and religious discussion.
Mistress Vines had received many invitations to join this supplicating conclave, but from the above reasons, together with a natural vivacity of character, which rendered gloom and pretension distasteful to her, she had neglected to ally herself with these ascetic women in what she regarded as an evidence of cant, and, it may be, of hypocrisy also, to her clear, cheerful intellect.
Captain Bonyton, however, secretly gave Sir Richard a hint, in a neighborly way, that the women felt themselves aggrieved at this omission, and the more, hinted at dark, mysterious opinions in regard to little Hope, which it might be well to counteract by a more familiar intercourse of Mistress Vines with her neighbors.
Sir Richard having suggested this to his fair dame, she might have been seen the next afternoon, fresh as a rose, and bright as the morning, picking her way to the mansion of Mistress Bonyton.
She carried herself bravely in her high heels, and the stiffest of stiff ruffs barricading her fair neck, and her rich brown hair drawn back from her handsome forehead, and frizzed in a way wondrous to behold. A little less of style, a little less of fineness, my lady, would have better suited the austere dames who await thy coming!
They were seated in the “fore-room” of the house, the shutters of which were partially closed, giving a dim, ghostly aspect to the interior, in which were seated about twenty women, plainly dressed, each with her hair parted at the top of the head and drawn to the back as smooth and tight as hair could well be drawn. The elderly matrons were seated at one side, and the younger grouped together near the door. Fair, pale young faces were not wanting; prematurely grave, but pure and tender.
“It is nearly upon the stroke of three, and yet she does not come. Reach me the Bible; the Lord’s work must not wait because of his tardy servants.”
This from Mistress Bonyton, who drew down her face ominously, and closed with a groan.