“Eh, Wat!” cries Helen: and Mother,—“Walter, my dear boy!”
“’Tis truth, I do ensure you,” saith he: “and Sir Walter Raleigh, one of the first wits in all Europe: and young Blount, that is high in the Queen’s Majesty’s favour: and my young Lord of Essex, unto whom she showeth good countenance. ’Tis not possible to lower one’s self in the eyes of such men as these—and assuredly I should were I less free-handed.”
“My word, Wat, but thou hast fallen amongst an ill pack of hounds!” saith Aunt Joyce.
“Then it is possible, or at least more possible, to lower thyself in our eyes, Wat?” saith Father.
“Father, you make me to feel ’shamed of myself!” crieth Wat. “Yet, think you, so should they when I were among them, if I should hold back from these very deeds.”
“Then is there no difference, my son,” asks Father, still as gentle as ever, “betwixt being ’shamed for doing the right, and for doing the wrong?”
“But—pardon me, Sir—you are not in it!” saith Walter. “Do but think, what it should feel to be counted singular, and as a speckled bird, unlike all around.”
“Well!” saith Aunt Joyce, fervently, “I am five and fifty years of age this morrow; and have in my time done many a foolish deed: but I do thank Heaven that I was never so left to mine own folly as to feel any ambition to make one of a row of buttons!”
I laughed—I could not choose.
“You are a woman, Aunt,” saith Wat. “’Tis different with you.”