Aunt Joyce turned on me a very solemn face.
“Milly,” saith she, “Madge is in at the gate.”
“O Aunt! have you seen her die?”
“I have seen her rise to life,” she made answer. “Child, the Lord grant to thee and me such a death as hers! It seemed as though, right at the last moment, the mist that had veiled it all her earth-time cleared from the poor brain, and the light poured in on her like a flood. ‘The King in His beauty! The King in His beauty!’ were the last words she spake, but in such a voice of triumph and gladness as I never heard from her afore. O Milly, my darling child! how vast the difference between the being ‘saved so as by fire,’ and the abundant entrance of the good and faithful servant! Let us not rest short of it.”
And methought, as I followed Aunt Joyce into the breakfast-chamber, that God helping me, I would not.
Note 1. For many years after the Reformation the use of fish was made compulsory in Lent, from the wish to benefit the fish trade. A licence to eat flesh in Lent (obtained from the Queen, not the Pope) cost 40 shillings in 1599.