The Abbot called a monk who was waiting on him and bade him send word to a woman known as Goody Megges, bidding her come at once. Within ten minutes she entered, having, as she explained, been warned to be close at hand.
This Goody Megges, who had some local repute as a “wise woman,” was a person of about fifty years of age, remarkable for her enormous size, a flat face with small oblong eyes and a little, twisted mouth, which had caused her to be nicknamed “the Flounder.” She greeted the Abbot with much reverence, curtseying till he thought she would fall backwards, and having received his fatherly blessing, sank into a chair, that seemed to vanish beneath her bulk.
“You will wonder why I summon you here, friend, since this is no place for the services of those of your trade,” began the Abbot, with a smile.
“Oh, no, my Lord,” answered the woman; “I’ve heard it is to wait upon Sir Christopher Harflete’s wife in her trouble.”
“I wish that I could call her by the honoured name of wife,” said the Abbot, with a sigh. “But a mock-marriage does not make a wife, Mistress Megges, and, alas! the poor babe, if ever it should be born, will be but a bastard, marked from its birth with the brand of shame.”
Now, the Flounder, who was no fool, began to take her cue.
“It is sad, very sad, your Holiness—no, that’s wrong; but never mind, it will be right before all’s done, and a good omen, I say, coming so sudden and chancy—your Lordship, I mean—not but what there’s lots of the sort about here, as is generally the case round a—I mean everywhere. Moreover, they generally grow up bad and ungrateful, as I know well from my own three—not but what, of course, I was married fast enough. Well, what I was going to say was, that when things is so, sometimes it is a true blessing if the little innocents should go off at the first, and so be spared the finger of shame and the sniff of scorn,” and she paused.
“Yes, Mistress Megges, or at least in such a case it is not for us to rail at the decree of Heaven—provided, of course, that the infant has lived long enough to be baptized,” he added hastily.
“No, your Eminence, no. That’s just what I said to that Smith girl last spring, when, being a heavy sleeper, I happened to overlie her brat and woke up to find it flat and blue. When she saw it she took on, bellowing like a heifer that has lost its first calf, and I said to her, ‘Mary, this isn’t me; it’s Heaven. Mary, you should be very thankful, since my burden has rid you of your burden, and you can bury such a tiny one for next to nothing. Mary, cry a little if you like, for that’s natural with the first, but don’t come here flying in the face of Heaven with your railings, and gates, and posts—especially the rails, for Heaven hates ‘em.’”
“Ah!” asked the Abbot, with mild interest, “and pray what did Mary do then?”