Joan told me afterwards, in a tone of great amusement, that “Mother Ada finished her beads very slowly, and then said she would go after you. But she stopped to look at Sister Annot’s work, and at once discovered that if left in that state it would suffer damage before she came back. So she sat down and wrought at that for above an hour. Then she was just going again, but she found that an end of the fringe was coming off my robe, and she fetched needle and thread of silk, and sewed it on. The third time she was just going, when she saw the fire wanted wood. So she kept just going all day till about half an hour before vespers, and then at last she contrived to go.”
Note 1. I may here ask pardon for an anachronism in having brought Wycliffe forward as a Reformer some years before he really began to be so. The state of men’s minds in general was as I have described it; the uneasy stir of coming reformation was in the air; the pamphlet which is so often (but wrongly) attributed to Wycliffe, The Last Age of the Church, had been written some fifteen years before this time: but Wycliffe himself, though then a political reformer, did not come forward as a religious reformer until about six years later.
Note 2. Psalm 138 verse 2, Vulgate. The Authorised Version correctly follows the Hebrew—“Thou hast magnified Thy Word above all Thy Name.”
Part 3—- Chapter 5.
Waiting.
“If we could push ajar the gates of life,
And stand within, and all God’s workings see,
We could interpret all this doubt and strife,
And for each mystery could find a key.
“But not to-day. Then be content, poor heart!
God’s plans, like lilies pure and white, unfold:
We must not tear the close-shut leaves apart;
Time will reveal the calyxes of gold.
“And if through patient toil we reach the land
Where tired feet with sandals loose may rest,
When we shall clearly see and understand,
I think that we shall say - ‘God knew the best.’”
When we came out from the chapel after vespers, my Lady commanded Sister Gaillarde to follow her. The rest of us went, of course, to the work-room, where Sister Gaillarde joined us in about half an hour. I saw that she looked as though she had heard something that greatly amused her, but we could know nothing till we reached the recreation-room.