Mistress Anne had no wish to deny that.
“And now to-day do I find you tricked out in a manner whose wicked unseemliness passes all belief. Furthermore, in open defiance of my command, you have entered the town. Is it not so?”
The culprit had no word now. The imperious valor was routed utterly.
“I do fear me,” said the Constable, “you are in the toils of a disease which admits only of the sharpest remedy. Week by week have I remarked an ever-growing sauciness. It is a malady which in man or woman, horse or hound, can only be met in one way.”
The Constable rose slowly from his chair. He was a tall, powerful man, and very formidable and even terrible he looked. He took down a heavy hunting-whip which hung from a nail on the wall. His daughter had not imagination enough to be terrified easily. Moreover for her years she had a particularly resolute will. It was this that an imminent peril restored to her.
“I will not be beaten,” she said, with proud defiance. “This day I am eighteen years old. This day I am a woman, and being a woman I will do in all things as it pleases me.”
The Constable ran the long whip through his fingers. “Oh and soh, mistress,” said he, “this day you claim the estate of womanhood. And having come to that high condition you put forth a modest claim to do in all things as you would. Well, I am bound to say I have heard that a number of the women of the present age have these froward ideas. But it is new to me that there are any so vain as to practice them.”
“Wherefore should they not, Sir John?” The clear and brave eyes of his daughter were fixed on his own. “Is it not that in all things a woman is the equal of a man, as the Queen herself has shown, always except in those wherein she is a man’s superior?”
Again the Constable caressed the whip as though he loved it. “These be very perilous ideas,” he said. “I had not thought this canker had bit so deep. Of all the diseases that afflict our sorry age I believe there is none so vile as that which leads a young gentlewoman of careful and modest nurture to speeches of such an idle vanity. As I am a Christian man I can hardly believe my ears.”
“Sir John, it is the truth I speak. And has not the Queen herself approved it?”