“Your humour is a trifle broad, neighbour,” remarked Master Gower; “the little ladies might appreciate something finer.”
“Finer indeed—what, and get as thin as your humour, Master Gower, that we must needs go looking for it with a candle. But humour or no humour, what are we to do with these knaves? How counsel you, Mistress Mowbray?”
“Turn them out and burn their houses,” she answered, “and let them shift for themselves.”
“I think we should give them something to help them to get elsewhere,” said Master Richard.
“Ay, their corpses might be an unpleasant sight, lying round here,” dryly put in Ralph Latour.
“But why turn them out at all?” asked Aline at last. “It’s only one or two that have done any harm, why be so hard on the others?”
“Nonsense, child, where there’s a plague spot, the whole body is sick,” cried Mistress Mowbray. “The plague spot will always spread, and they are all involved already, I’ll warrant; away with them all I say. And what do you mean, child, advising your betters and thrusting yourself into wise folks’ counsels?”
“It liketh me to hear a child’s views, if the bairn be not too forward,” said Latour gravely. “There is a freshness and simplicity about them that we are apt to miss after our long travailing in the world.”
“‘Simplicity,’ indeed,” rejoined Mistress Mowbray, “simpleton is the kind of word you want. In my young days we were taught our place; ‘freshness,’ forsooth! We want no fresh raw wenches to open their mouths in this place, anyway.”
Latour took no notice of his hostess’ rudeness, but turned to Aline saying,—“But do you not think, child, that a severe example would be a terror to evil-doers far and wide, and Mistress Mowbray is doubtless right, they will all be infected, even if the evil in every case does not show itself. All through the world’s story the innocent have suffered with the guilty; moreover, it will quicken in them a responsibility for their associates. Besides, if, as Master Mowbray suggests, we help them on their way there will be no hardship done, it is only a change of abode. Come now, Aline, is that not so?”