“I won’t have it!” cried Mrs Louvaine in an agony. “My poor darling boy! I won’t have it! My fatherless child shall not go among snakes and witches and demons—”
“Now, Faith, do be quiet, or you’ll have a fit of the mother (hysterics). Nobody wants to send the lad amongst snakes—I don’t know that there’s so much as an adder there. As to devils, he’ll find them where’er he goeth, and some of them in men’s and women’s bodies, or I mistake.”
“If your Ladyship liked better,” suggested Mr Marshall, quietly, “to take the other road I named, I am acquaint with a bookseller in Oxford town, that is a cousin of my sister’s husband, a good honest man, and a God-fearing, with whom, if you so pleased, he might be put. ’Tis a clean trade, and a seemly, that need not disgrace any to handle: and methinks there were no need to mention wherefore it were, save that the place were sought for a young gentleman that had lost money through disputes touching lands. That is true, and it should be sufficient to account for all that the master might otherwise note as strange in a servant.”
“My poor fatherless boy!” sobbed Mrs Louvaine, with her handkerchief at her eyes. “Servant to a tradesfellow!”
“We are all servants,” answered Mr Marshall: “and we need think no scorn thereof, since our Lord Himself took on Him the form of a servant. Howbeit, for this even, the chief question is, Doth any of you gentlewomen desire to return with me?—Mrs Louvaine?”
“I could not bear it!” came in a stifled voice from behind the handkerchief. “To see my poor child in his misery—it would break mine heart outright. ’Tis enough to think of, and too-too (exceedingly) great to brook, even so.”
“Let her pass; she’ll be ne’er a bit of good,” said Temperance in a contemptuous whisper. Then raising her voice, she added,—“Now, Lady Lettice, don’t you think thereof. There’s no need, for Edith and I can settle everything, and you’d just go and lay yourself by, that you should have no good of your life for a month or more. Be ruled by me, and let Edith go back and talk matters o’er with Aubrey, and see whether in her judgment it were better he lay hid or went to the bookseller. She’s as good a wit as any of us, yourself except. Said I well?”
“If your Ladyship would suffer me to add a word,” said the clergyman, “I think Mrs Temperance has well spoken.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, as if Lady Louvaine were balancing duties. Mr Marshall noticed how her thin hand trembled, and how the pink flush came and went on her delicate cheek.
“Well, children, have it as you will,” said the old lady at last. “It costs me much to give it up; but were I to persist, maybe it should cost more to you than I have a right to ask at your hands. Let be: I will tarry.”