“By ’r Lady! have yonder fond (foolish) books of the Lutterworth parson at thy tongue’s end, and make up a sad face, and talk of faith and grace and forgiving of sins and the like, and mine head to yon shred of tinsel an’ she give thee not a gown within the se’nnight.”
“But, Mistress Alvena! that were to be an hypocrite, an’ you felt it not.”
“Hu-te-tu! We be all hypocrites. Some of us feign for one matter, and some for other. I wis somewhat thereabout, child; for ere I came hither was I maid unto the Lady Julian (a fictitious person), recluse of Tamworth Priory. By our dear Lady her girdle! saw I nothing of hypocrisy there!”
“You never signify, Mistress, that the blessed recluse was an hypocrite?”
“The blessed recluse was mighty fond of sweetbreads,” said Alvena, taking a pin out of her mouth, “and many an one smuggled I in to her under my cloak, when Father Luke thought she was a-fasting on bread and water. And one clereful (glorious) night had we, she and I, when one that I knew had shot me a brace of curlews, and coming over moorland by the church, he dropped them—all by chance, thou wist!—by the door of the cell. And I, oping the door—to see if it rained, trow!—found these birds a-lying there. Had we no supper that night!—and ’twas a vigil even. The blessed martyr or apostle (for I mind me not what day it were) forgive us!”
“But how dressed you them?” said Maude.
Alvena stopped in her fitting and pinning to laugh.
“Thou sely maid! The sacristan was my mother’s brother.”
Maude looked up as if she did not see the inference.
“I roasted them in the sacristy, child. The priests were all gone home to bed; and so soon as the ground were clear, mine uncle rapped of the door; and the Lady Julian came after me to the sacristy, close lapped in my cloak—”