“Pray you, Aunt Joyce, tell me a thing,” said I.
“That will I, with a very good will, my maid,” saith she.
“Aunt Joyce, if a man were to come to you and entreat you to wed with him, by reason that he could not (should he say) keep in the right way without you did help him, and that, you refusing, you should be blameworthy of all his after sins—what should you say to him?”
I listened right earnestly for her answer. I was woeful ’feared she should say, “Wed with him, Nell, for sure, and thus save him.”
“Say?” quoth Aunt Joyce, looking up, with (it seemed me) somewhat like laughter in her eyes. “Fetch him a good buffet of his ear, forsooth, and ask at him by what right he called himself a man.”
“Then you should not think you bound to save him, Aunt?”
“Poor weak creature! Not I,” saith Aunt Joyce. “But whatso, Nell? Hast had any such a simpleton at thee?”
“Aunt,” said I, “’tis Nym Lewthwaite, who saith an’ I wed him not, he shall go straight to ruin, and that I must answer unto God for all his sins if so be.”
“Ask him where he found that in the Bible,” saith Aunt Joyce. “Take no thought about him, Nell. Trust me, if a man cannot keep straight without thee, he will not keep straight with thee. Poor limping soul! to come halting up and plead with a weak woman to leave him put his hand on her shoulder, to help him o’er the stones! ‘Carry me, prithee, good Mistress, o’er this rough place.’ Use thine own two legs, would I say to him, and be ashamed of thy meanness. And I dare be sworn he calls himself one of the nobler sex,” ends Aunt Joyce with a snort of scorn.
“O Aunt, I am so thankful you see it thus!” said I, drawing a long breath. “I was so afeard you should bid me do as Nym would.”