Sayth Master Gunnel: “It is a pity that Mistress Margaret is not here, for she knows the name of each of them, and their nature, and their uses.”
Margaret’s father laughs. “If Margaret is not spoiled, methinks it is not to her tutor she owes it—for he is always ready to blazon forth her praises. I am glad to think, however, that she has good skill in herbs. It is that the children may learn the uses of common things that I keep in my garden and paddock many a plant which the fastidious would cast forth. A woman should have good knowledge of healing.”
“And of what else?” inquires Master Gunnel, innocently.
A merry laugh from your host. “Look what artifices he useth, this good Gunnel, to get me to mount my favourite hobby. You must e’en take the consequences, if it rides off with me.”
And with that he is off in good earnest, and you are minded to lose no word of what he says about the way a girl should be educated.
“In your country,” he says (turning to you), “which would have been mine, too, had not one of my ancestors left Ireland for England, I have heard it said that embroiderers ever kept before them, stamped in a piece of leather, the pattern of that design which they wished to imitate on church robes and vestments. Now, even such a pattern, stamped on the imperishable leather of Holy Writ, lies to our hands; and I know that good Master Gunnel here (of whose work one may speak in a manner, not all too fanciful, as resembling that of the embroiderer) puts in never a stitch without looking carefully at the model. Is it not so, Master Gunnel?”
For answer Master Gunnel begins to quote the glorious words: “Who shall find a valiant woman? far, and from the uttermost coast is the price of her. The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils.” And so on, till the picture is complete, and the “Valiant Woman” stands out before you, strong, and wise, and chaste, and kind, and sweet, in all her imperishable beauty.
The hour is exquisite. Sweeter and sweeter grows the garden, as the dew distils new perfumes. The paling river is pricked here and there by a rare star; but in the sky itself, from where you sit, you can only see one, and that is Venus. In the faint light your host’s face, raised to it, shows very soft and dreamy. Is he thinking of the wife of his youth, the dead mother of his girls?
Presently he begins to talk again. “If I were a preacher, or a moralist, or anything but a lawyer, trained only to look for the flaws in all things, I could show you how in that one passage of Holy Writ is contained a whole treatise on the Education of Women. But Master Gunnel shall do it for me.”
“Right willingly,” declares Master Gunnel, “if you will but show me how.”