Little Will suddenly remembered that he was exceedingly tired, and said so.
“Thou’d better go to bed,” said her father, as they came up with the girls. “Well, Cis, who hast thou picked up?—I’m right thankful to you,” he added, looking at Rose, “for giving my little maid a helping hand. It’s a long way for such little ones, all the way from the Heath, and a heavy load for little arms, and I’m main thankful. Will you come in a bit and rest you?” he said to Rose.
But Rose declined, for she knew her mother would expect her to come back at once. She kissed Cissy, and told her, whenever she had a load to carry either way, to be sure she looked in at the Blue Bell, when Rose would help her if she possibly could: and giving the jar to Johnson, she bade him good-night, and turned back up the lane. Sir Thomas had walked on, as Rose supposed: at any rate, he was not to be seen. She went nearly a mile without seeing any one, until Margaret Thurston’s cottage came in sight. As Rose began to go a little more slowly, she heard footsteps behind her, and the next minute she was joined—to her surprise—by the priest.
“My daughter,” he said, in a soft, kind voice, “I think thou art Rose Allen?”
Rose dropped a courtesy, and said she was.
“I have been wishful to speak with some of thy father’s household,” said Sir Thomas, in the same gentle way: “so that I am fain to meet thee forth this even. Tell me, my child, is there illness in the house or no?”
Rose breathed quickly: she guessed pretty well what was coming.
“No, Father,” she answered; “we are all in good health, God be thanked for that same.”
“Truly. I am glad to hear thee so speak, my daughter, and in especial that thou rememberest to thank God. But wherefore, then, being in good health, have ye not come to give thanks to God in His own house, these eight Sundays past? Ye have been regular aforetime, since ye were back from the Bishop’s Court. Surely it is not true—I do hope and trust it is not true, that ye be slipping yet again into your past evil ways of ill opinions and presumptuous sin?”
The reason why the Mounts had not been to church was because the services were such as they could no longer join in. Queen Mary had brought back the Popish mass, and all the images which King Edward had done away with; so that to go to church was not to worship God but to worship idols. And so terrible was the persecution Mary had allowed to be set up, that the penalty for refusing to do this was to be burnt to death for what she called heresy.