“Eh, but it do feel like a dream! I shall have to pinch myself to make sure I’m awake. But, Master, do you think it is sure? She haven’t changed, think you?”
Mr Ewring shook his head. “The Lady Elizabeth suffered with us,” he said, “and she will not forsake us now. No, Dorothy, she has not changed: she is not one to change. Let us not distrust either her or the Lord. Ah, He knew what He would do! It was to be a sharp, short hour of tribulation, through which His Church was to pass, to purify, and try, and make her white: and now the land shall have rest forty years, that she may sing to Him a new song on the sea of glass. Those five years have lit the candle of England’s Church, and as our good old Bishop said in dying, by God’s grace it shall never be put out.”
“Well, sure, it’s a blessed day!”
“Dorothy, can you compass to drive with me to Hedingham again? I think long till those poor children be rescued. And the nuns will be ready and glad to give them up; they’ll not want to be found with Protestant children in their keeping—children, too, of a martyred man.”
“Master Ewring, give me but time to get me tidied and my hood, and I’ll go with you this minute, if you will. I was mopping out the loft. When Mistress do come back, she shall find her house as clean as she’d have had it if she’d been here, and that’s clean enough, I can tell you.”
“Right, friend, ‘Faithful in a little, faithful also in much.’ Dorothy, you’d have made a good martyr.”
“Me, Master?”
Mr Ewring smiled. “Well, whether shall it be to-morrow, or leave over Sunday?”
“If it liked you, Master, I would say to-morrow. Poor little dears! they’ll be so pleased to come back to their friends. I can be ready for them—I’ll work early and late but I will. Did you think of taking the little lad yourself, or are they all to bide with me?”
“I’ll take him the minute he’s old enough, and no more needs a woman’s hand about him. You know, Dorothy, there be no woman in mine house—now.”