“No, sweeting, neither to tell God,” answered Isoult. “Mrs Underhill meant not that, but spake only of confession unto a priest.”
“Thou must know, Kate,” explained Robin, “that some men will tell their sins unto any priest, in the stead of seeking forgiveness of God in their own chamber.”
“But what toucheth it the priest?” asked the child.
“Why, never a whit,” he answered.
“If the man have stole from the priest,” resumed she, “it were right he should tell him; like as I tell Father and Mother if I have done any wrong, because it is wrong to them. But if I had disobeyed Mother, what good were it that I should ask Mr Rose to forgive me? I should not have wronged him.”
“She hath a brave wit, methinks, our Kate,” observed Isoult to Robin, when the child had left the room.
Robin assented with a smile; but Dr Thorpe was so rude as to say, “All mothers’ geese be swans.”
The smile on Robin’s lips developed into laughter; Isoult answered, with as much indignant emphasis as her gentle nature could indulge in, “Were you no swan to yours, Dr Thorpe?”
Dr Thorpe’s reply disarmed all the enemy’s forces.
“Ah, child, I never knew her,” the old man said, sadly. “Maybe I had been a better man had I known a mother.”