Aunt Joyce, who was the only third person present, gave an amused little laugh.
“How long shall she be mistress, Temperance?”
“Why, till my Lady Lettice comes,” said Temperance, with a rather perplexed look.
“For ‘Lady Lettice,’ read ‘Mrs Agnes Marshall,’” was the answer of Aunt Joyce.
“Aunt Joyce!” cried Edith. “You never mean—”
“Don’t I? But I do, Mistress Bat’s-Eyes.”
“Well, I never so much as—”
“Never so much as saw a black cow a yard off, didst thou? See if it come not true. Now, my maids, go not and meddle your fingers in the pie, without you wish it not to come true. Methinks Aubrey hath scarce yet read his own heart, and Agnes is innocent as driven snow of all imagination thereof: nevertheless, mark my words, that Agnes Marshall shall be the next lady of Selwick Hall. And I wouldn’t spoil the pie, were I you; it shall eat tasty enough if you’ll but leave it to bake in the oven. It were a deal better so than for the lad to fetch home some fine town madam that should trouble herself with his mother and grandmother but as the cuckoo with the young hedge-sparrows in his foster-mother’s nest. She’s a downright good maid, Agnes, and she is bounden to your mother and yon, and so is her father: and though, if Selwick were to turn you forth, your home is at Minster Lovel, as my child here knows,”—and Aunt Joyce laid her hand lovingly on that of Edith—“yet while we be here in this short wilderness journey, ’tis best not to fall out by the way. Let things be, children: God can take better care of His world and His Church than you or I can do it.”
“Eh, I’ll meddle with nought so good,” responded Temperance, heartily. “If the lad come to no worse than that, he shall fare uncommon well, and better than he deserveth. As for the maid, I’m not quite so sure: but I’ll hope for the best.”
“The best thing you can do, my dear. ‘We are saved by hope’—not as a man is saved by the rope that pulleth him forth of the sea, but rather as he is saved by the light that enableth him to see and grasp it. He may find the rope in the dark; yet shall he do it more quicklier and with much better comfort in the light. ‘Hope thou in God,’ ‘Have faith in God,’ ‘Fear not,’—all those precepts be brethren; and one or other of them cometh very oft in Scripture. For a man cannot hope without some faith, and he shall find it hard to hope along with fear. Faith, hope, love—these do abide for ever.”