“Master Hall is not now at home, my masters, so it should be to no purpose you visit his house. I give you good-morrow.”
“Wise maid!” said Malledge with a laugh, when the girls were out of hearing. “If all were as close as thou, we should thrive little.”
“They are all in a story!” said the sumner.
“Nay, not all,” replied Malledge. “We have one to thank. But truly, they are a close-mouthed set, the most of them.”
Chapter Seventeen.
The Justice is indiscreet.
“Methinks we be like to have further troubles touching religion in these parts. Marry, I do marvel what folks would be at, that they cannot be content to do their duty, and pay their dues, and leave the cure of their souls to the priest. As good keep a dog and bark thyself, say I, as pay dues to the priest and take thought for thine own soul.”
The speaker was Mr Justice Roberts, and he sat at supper in his brother’s house, one of a small family party, which consisted, beside the brothers, of their sister, Mistress Collenwood, Mistress Grena Holland, Gertrude, and Pandora. The speech was characteristic of the speaker. The Justice was by no means a bad man, as men go—and all of them do not go very straight in the right direction—but he made one mistake which many are making in our own day; he valued peace more highly than truth. His decalogue was a monologue, consisting but of one commandment: Do your duty. What a man’s duty was, the Justice did not pause to define. Had he been required to do so, his dissection of that difficult subject would probably have run in three grooves—go to church; give alms; keep out of quarrels.