'Better have a care, mistress,' was the reply, and he added; 'scant blessings come to those who turn Sunday into a day of revelry.'
'Ah!' said another voice, 'you be one of the saints, Jeremy; but why be hard on country folk for a little merry-making, when the Queen and all the grand nobles and ladies do the same, so I've heard, at Court.'
'I tell you,' was the reply, 'it's the old Popish custom—mass in the morning, and feasting and revelling all the rest of the day. I tell you, it is these licences which make the Nonconformists our bitter foes.'
'Foes!' the other said. 'Ay, there's a pack of 'em all round. Some seen, some unseen—Papists and Puritans—but, thank the stars, I care not a groat for either. I am contented, any way. Saint or sinner, Puritan or Papist, I say, let 'em alone, if they'll let me alone.'
'Ay, there's the rub,' said the other, 'there's no letting alone. You and I may live to see the fires kindled again, and burn ourselves, for that matter.'
OLD HOUSES BY THE LYCH GATE, PENSHURST.
'I sha'n't burn. I know a way out of that. I watch the tide, and turn my craft to sail along with it.'
And this easy-going time-server, of whom there are a good many descendants in the present day, laughed a careless laugh, and then, as the sound of horses' feet was heard, and that of the crowd drawing near, he good-naturedly lifted Ambrose on his shoulder, and, planting his broad back against the trunk of the great overshadowing elm, he told the boy to sit steady, and he would carry him to the wall skirting the field, where he could see all that was going on.