“Well-a-day! did he so?” responded Agnes.
“Ay, so did he. But wot you what Christie Marvell saith? He saith ’tis rare evil doing that any save a priest should read in yon big book, and he hath heard his father for to say the same. And he saith old Father Dan, the Cordelier, that is alway up and down hereabout, he said unto him that he would not for no money that he should learn to read the Evangel, for that it should do him a mischief. What think you, Mistress Agnes?”
“Methinks, Will, thou shalt do well to give good heed unto the Black Friar, and to thy master at the school, and leave Christie Marvell a-be with his idle talk.”
“Nay, go to, Mistress Agnes! ’tis Father Dan’s talk.”
“Then tarry till Father Dan tell thee so much himself. It may well be that Christie took not his words rightly.”
“Ay,” said the child, doubtfully. “But what manner of mischief, think you, meant he? Should it cast a spell on me, or give me the ague?”
Little Will, as we have already seen, was the child of a superstitious mother. To hear the tap of a death-watch was sufficient to make Mistress Flint lose a night’s sleep; and a person who disbelieved in fairies she would have considered next door to a reprobate. But Agnes was remarkably free from such ideas for her time, when few were entirely devoid of them; and she laughed at little Will’s fancy.
“Well,” said he, “any way, when I can read in the great Bible, Mistress Agnes, then will I read unto you, and you shall come to the Minster and hear me. Christie’s mother saith there be right pretty stories therein.”
Like many another in those days, into the household of Henry and Cicely Marvell, the Gospel had brought not peace, but a sword. The husband, a stern, morose man, was fondly attached to the beggarly elements of Roman ceremonials; while the wife had received and hidden the Word in her heart, and though too much afraid of her husband to venture far, contrived now and then to drop a word for Christ’s Gospel. Christie, the troublesome boy, cared for none of these things, and made game of the views of each parent in turn.
Agnes smilingly bade good-bye to her ambitious little friend Will, for they had now reached Mistress Winter’s door. A scolding awaited her, as usual, first for “dawdling,” and then for spilling a few drops of water on the brick floor as she set down the heavy pails. But Agnes scarcely heeded it, for her mind was full of a new project. It would be some time before little Will could read, and longer still before he could see over the Minster desk, where the great Bible lay chained. But why should she wait for that? She dimly remembered, in long past days, when her aunt was living, having several times gone with her on Sunday afternoons to vespers in the Cathedral, and heard some one reading at the desk in the nave. Then she had not cared to listen. Why should she not go to hear it now?