“He is very young,” answered Mrs Tremayne, who always excused everybody as long as it was possible. “He will amend with time, we may well hope.”
“Which is to say, I admire him not,” suggested Mrs Rose, now a very old woman, on whom time had brought few bodily infirmities, and no, mental ones.
“Who doth admire him, Barbara, at the Court?” asked Mr Tremayne.
“Marry La’kin! every soul, as methinks, save Mistress Meg, and Sim, and Jennet. Mistress Meg—I misdoubt if she doth; and Sim says he is a nincompoop; (silly fellow) and Jennet saith, he is as like as two peas to the old fox that they nailed up on the barn door when she was a little maid. But Sir Thomas, and my Lady, and Master Jack, be mighty taken with him; and Mistress Rachel but little less: and as to Mistress Blanche, she hath eyes for nought else.”
“Poor Blanche!” said Thekla.
“Blanche shall be a mouse in a trap, if she have not a care,” said Mrs Rose, with a wise shake of her head.
“Good lack, Mistress! she is in the trap already, but she wot it not.”
“When we wot us to be in a trap, we be near the outcoming,” remarked the Rector.
“Of a truth I cannot tell,” thoughtfully resumed Barbara, “whether this young gentleman be rare deep, or rare shallow. He is well-nigh as ill to fathom as Mistress Lucrece herself. Lo’ you, o’ Sunday morrow, Sir Thomas told him that the law of the land was for every man and woman in the Queen’s dominions to attend the parish church twice of the Sunday, under twenty pound charge by the month if they tarried at home, not being let by sickness: and I had heard him say himself that he looked Don John should kick thereat. But what doth Don John but to take up his hat, and walk off to the church, handing of Mistress Rachel, as smiling as any man; and who as devote as he when he was there?—Spake the Amen, and sang in the Psalm, and all the rest belike. Good lack! I had thought the Papists counted it sinful for to join in a Protestant service.”
“Not alway,” said Mr Tremayne. “Maybe he hath the priest’s licence in his pocket.”