“I’ll not forget, Master. Good even, and God bless you!”
Mr Ewring stood a moment longer to watch Amy as she ran down the road, with a step tenfold more light and elastic than the weary, languid one with which she had come up.
“God bless the maid!” he said half aloud, “and may He ‘stablish, strengthen, settle’ her! ‘He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy.’ But we on whom He has had it aforetime, how unbelieving and hopeless we are apt to be! Verily, the last recruit that I looked to see join Christ’s standard was Nicholas Clere’s daughter.”
Chapter Thirty Nine.
The last martyrdom.
“Good-morrow, Mistress Clere! Any placards of black velvet have you?”
A placard with us means a large handbill for pasting on walls: in Queen Mary’s time they meant by it a double stomacher,—namely an ornamentation for the front of a dress, put on separate from it, which might either be plain silk or velvet, or else worked with beautiful embroidery, gold twist, sometimes even pearls and precious stones.
Mrs Clere came in all haste and much obsequiousness, for it was no less a person than the Mayoress of Colchester who thus inquired for a black velvet placard.