"Oh, Miles! what would our lives be without this sure hope to rest upon?" said Lady Paton, and then her mother came in and Cicely turned to meet her, the tears shining in her eyes as she looked up into her mother's face. "I could not help it, mother," she said, half-pleadingly.
"You have decided, then, my child," said Lady Guildford, and then she and Cicely sat down together in the pleasant summer parlour, and Sir Miles crept away to begin his preparations for the journey. He was very glad, very thankful that his wife had decided to go back with him; although he was very sorry to take her from her parents and the dear home nest so soon. Still, in these uncertain, unsettled days, it was best that they should be together, especially in the unforeseen circumstances that had so suddenly arisen.
So the next day they went the first stage of the journey by water, sleeping the night at the Westminster hostelry, and setting out at daybreak on horseback as they came towards Woodstock.
It soon became apparent to the travellers, that the monastery near their own home, was not the only one from which the monks had recently been driven, for every mile or two they would meet little groups of monks looking weary and footsore already from the unwonted exertion of walking so far. These were not mendicant friars, who journeyed up and down the country picking up a living as they could, but men who had lived an idle life, many of them old and unfit for labour of any kind now.
Sir Miles and Lady Paton spoke to one or two as they passed, asking where they were going; all told the same tale,—they were bound for London, where they hoped some provision would be made for them out of the revenues of their monasteries.
"Good may eventually come of this," remarked the gentleman; "but it should have been done with less haste and less harshness."
But the sight of these unwonted travellers made them push on towards home with more haste, for although Margery and Rankin between them might be trusted to devise ways and means for the proper control of the household, there was no telling what might happen when the monks were quartered among the tenantry.
It was late at night when Paton Hall was at length reached, but Margery and the steward were on the watch, in the hope of seeing the travellers return. Their coming was a great relief to Margery and the steward, for the poor old Prior was not expected to live many days; and the responsibility of having a sick man in the house, and only a young priest to attend upon him, was rather trying in the absence of the master.
"The poor old fellow will not have anybody else near him but Father John, who is a doctor and a priest, too, it seems, and has to be nurse as well now," said Margery, when she explained the situation of affairs to her brother.
Lady Paton was too weary to think of anything, and went to bed as soon as possible; but when Sir Miles had had some supper, and removed the dust of travel, he sent a servant to announce his arrival to Father John, and ask whether he would like to see him at once, or would prefer to wait until the morning.