“I doubt not thou wilt do well, my daughter. Bear thou in mind that Christ our Lord is thy Master, and thy service must be good enough to be laid at His feet. Then shalt thou well serve the Queen.”
Agnes was a very ignorant woman. Bishop Grosteste, being himself a wise man, could not at all realise how ignorant she was. She knew very little how to serve God, but she did really wish to do it. And that, after all, is the great thing. Those who have the will can surely, sooner or later, find out how.
When the guests were gone, Agnes threw another log of wood upon the fire, and came and stood before it. “Well, Mother, what must we do touching this matter? Verily I am all of a tumblement. What think you?”
“I think, my daughter,” said old Muriel calmly from the chimney-corner, “that we are not going to set forth for London within this next half-hour.”
“Nay, truly; yet we must think well on it.”
“We shall do well to sleep on it, and yet better to ask counsel of the Lord.”
“But we must go, Mother! It would never do to offend the holy Bishop!”
“Bishop Robert my brother is not he that should be angered because we preferred God’s counsel to his. But it may be that we shall find, after prayer and thought, that his counsel is God’s.”
It was to that conclusion they came the next day.
After the Bishop’s departure, for a long time all was bustle and confusion. Agnes declared that she did not know where her head was, nor sometimes whether she had any. Avice was at the height of enjoyment. Old Muriel went quietly about her work, keeping at it, “doing the next thing,” and got through more work than either.