“It is a pity thou wert not a monk, my son,” said the priest, whose gravity seemed hard to keep.
“Ay, it is!” was Dan’s hearty response. “I’m alway fain to pass a nunnery. Says I to myself, There’s a bonnie lot o’ snakes safe tied up out o’ folkses’ way. They’ll never fly at nobody no more. I’m fain for the men as hasn’t got ’em. Ay, I am!”
Avice and her young cousins laughed.
“Do you think they never fly at one another, Uncle Dan?” asked the former.
“Let ’em!” returned that gentleman with much cordiality. “A man gets a bit o’ peace then. It’s t’ only time he does. If they’d just go and make a reg’lar end o’ one another! but they never does,”—and the smith pushed away his trencher with a sigh. “Well! I reckon I mun be going. She gave me while four:—and I’m feared o’ vesper bell ringing afore I can get home. There’ll be more bells nor one, if so. God be wi’ ye, lasses! Good even, Father.”
And the door was shut on the unhappy husband of the delightful Filomena. Emma took leave soon after, and Bertha went with her, to see another friend before she returned to her employer’s house. Avice and the priest were left alone. For a few minutes both were silent; but perhaps their thoughts were not very unlike.
“I wish, under your leave, Father,” said Avice at length, “that somebody would say a word to Aunt Filomena. I am afraid both she and Uncle Dan are very ignorant. Truly, so am I: and it should be some one who knows better. I doubt if he quite means all he says; but he thinks too ill of women,—and indeed, with five such as he has at home, who can wonder at it? He has no peace from morning to night; and he is naturally a man who loves peace and quiet—as you are yourself, holy Father, unless I mistake.”
“Thou art not mistaken, my daughter,” said Father Thomas. Something inside him was giving him a sharp prick or two. Did he love quiet too much, so as to interfere with his duties to his fellow-men? And then something else inside the priest’s heart rose up, as it were, to press down the question, and bid the questioner be silent.
“I wonder,” said Avice, innocently, quite unaware of the course of her companion’s thoughts, “whether, if Aunt Filomena knew her duty better, she might not give poor Uncle Dan a little more rest. He is good, in his way, and as far as he knows. I wish I knew more! But then,” Avice concluded, with a little laugh, “I am only a woman.”
“Yet thou art evidently one of the few whom he likes and respects,” answered the priest. “Be it thine, my daughter, to show him that women are not all of an evil sort. Do thy best, up to the light thou hast; and cry to God for more light, so that thou mayest know how to do better. ‘Pour forth thy prayers to Him,’ as saith the Collect for the First Sunday after the Epiphany, ‘that thou mayest know what thy duty requires of thee, and be able to comply with what thou knowest.’ It is a good prayer, and specially for them that are perplexed concerning their duty.” (See Note 2.)