"When you have written that which I have told you to write, say so, Audrey," he commanded. "Don't sit there staring at nothing!"
Audrey came back to the present with a start, took up a pen, and drew the standish nearer. "'Answer of Gideon Darden, Minister of Fair View Parish, in Virginia, to the several Queries contained in my Lord Bishop of London's Circular Letter to the Clergy in Virginia,'" she read, and poised her pen in air.
"Read out the questions," ordered Darden, "and write my answer to each in the space beneath. No blots, mind you, and spell not after the promptings of your woman's nature."
Going to a side table, be mixed for himself, in an old battered silver cap, a generous draught of bombo; then, with the drink in his hand, walked heavily across the uncarpeted floor to his armchair, which creaked under his weight as he sank into its leathern lap. He put down the rum and water with so unsteady a hand that the liquor spilled, and when he refilled his pipe half the contents of his tobacco box showered down upon his frayed and ancient and unclean coat and breeches. From the pocket of the latter he now drew forth a silver coin, which he balanced for a moment upon his fat forefinger, and finally sent spinning across the table to Audrey.
"'Tis the dregs of thy guinea, child, that Paris and Hugon and I drank at the crossroads last night. 'Burn me,' says I to them, 'if that long-legged lass of mine shan't have a drop in the cup!' And say Hugon"—
What Hugon said did not appear, or was confided to the depths of the tankard which the minister raised to his lips. Audrey looked at the splendid shilling gleaming upon the table beside her, but made no motion toward taking it into closer possession. A little red had come into the clear brown of her cheeks. She was a young girl, with her dreams and fancies, and the golden guinea would have made a dream or two come true.
"'Query the first,'" she read slowly, "'How long since you went to the plantations as missionary?'"
Darden, leaning back in his chair, with his eyes uplifted through the smoke clouds to the ceiling, took his pipe from his mouth, for the better answering of his diocesan. "'My Lord, thirteen years come St. Swithin's day,'" he dictated. "'Signed, Gideon Darden.' Audrey, do not forget thy capitals. Thirteen years! Lord, Lord, the years, how they fly! Hast it down, Audrey?"
Audrey, writing in a slow, fair, clerkly hand, made her period, and turned to the Bishop's second question: "'Had you any other church before you came to that which you now possess?'"
"'No, my Lord,'" said the minister to the Bishop; then to the ceiling: "I came raw from the devil to this parish. Audrey, hast ever heard children say that Satan comes and walks behind me when I go through the forest?"