Mrs. Cromwell:
I don't know what will happen. I sometimes think the world isn't worth quarrelling about at all. And yet I'm a silly old woman to talk like that. But Oliver is a brave fellow—and John, all of them. I want them to be brave in peace—that's the way you think at eighty.
(Reading.)
This Mr. Donne is a very good poet, but he's rather hard to understand. I suppose that is being eighty, too. Mr. Herrick is very simple. John Hampden sent me some copies from a friend who knows Mr. Herrick. I like them better than John does.
(She takes up a manuscript book and reads:)
Lord, Thou hast given me a cell
Wherein to dwell;
A little house, whose humble roof
Is waterproof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry....
But Mr. Shakespeare was best of all, I do believe. A very civil gentleman, too. I spoke to him once—that was forty years ago, the year Oliver was born, I remember. He didn't hold with all this talk against kings.
Elizabeth: