“Marry come up! So my sweet young damosel hath made friends, quotha! Prithee, was it my Lady’s Grace of Suffolk thou wentest forth to see, or my Lady of Norfolk, trow? Did she give thee a ride o’ her velvet pillion, bestudded with gold?”
Agnes thought it would be best to get it over. The storm which must come might as well fall soon as late. She stood up, and looked the terrible Mistress Winter in the face.
“Please it you, Mistress Winter, I am handfast to wedlock; and he that shall be mine husband it is that I have talked withal this even.”
And having so spoken, Agnes waited quietly for the tempest.
Chapter Six.
The Shadow before.
“Oh for the faith to grasp Heaven’s bright For Ever,
Amid the shadows of earth’s Little While!”
Jane Crewdson.
Sheer amazement kept Mistress Winter silent for one moment after Agnes had made her startling revelation. That her bondslave should have dared to dream of freedom was almost too preposterous for belief. And she was powerless to stop this most insubordinate proceeding; for, never anticipating such a calamity, and not fond of spending money, except on herself and her daughters, she had not, as she might have done, bound Agnes her apprentice. But after that minute of astonished silence, a thunderstorm such as even Agnes had never before experienced, burst upon her devoted head. If Mistress Winter might be believed, no such instance of rebellion, perversity, ingratitude, and all imaginable wickedness, had ever before occurred since Adam and Eve quitted Paradise. Agnes was asked to what she expected to come in this life, and where she expected to go after it. When Mistress Winter became weary of scolding, which was not soon, Joan took up the tale, and when she was tired Dorothy succeeded, and as all were gifted with considerable powers of speech, the ball was kept going until bedtime. Then Agnes was allowed to creep to her coarse rug and bundle of straw, feeling herself in peace at last.