“That she was well-read,” says Master Gunnel, “is not without warranty.”
“Now, how may that be?” you inquire; and Master Gunnel instances her clever and sensible conversation, which, he holds reasonably enough, was not acquired without reading, and study, and listening to the conversation of learned men. “I take it,” he says, turning to More, “that we can interpret this, what is further said of her: ‘She had opened her mouth to wisdom, and the law of clemency is on her tongue.’”
But here there comes a sound of laughter thrilling through the garden, and a scamper of light feet up the steps that lead to the flat roof of the new building, and the whole Academia, with the exception of Jack and Cecy (who have been attacked by “Johnny Nods,” and carried off to their respective beds), are here to tell all the frolic they had in the dairy, and how long it has taken for the butter to come.
Part II.
When you found yourself last night in the oak bed-chamber, which Dame Alice had assigned to you as the pleasantest in the house, you felt strangely disinclined for slumber. So you set the wax candle (which had been borne before you very ceremoniously, to light you to your quarters) in a place secure from the night breeze, and, unbolting the heavy wooden shutter as noiselessly as possible, you opened your lattice, and stepped out into the balcony—out into the night that was sweet with flowers and starlight.
Then, as you sought among the stars for those with which you had made friendship when you formed one of the little group of star-gazers on the roof of the new building, you seemed to hear again the voice of your host. How droll he had been as he pulled Daisy’s pink ear, and praised her for that she was able, on occasion, to tell the sun from the moon! But, presently, the laughter and bantering had died away, and you found yourself listening in a delicious hushed expectancy for a whisper of the music of the spheres as your host’s words made you think of them as moving harmoniously, carrying each its appointed luminary like a blazing jewel set in a crystal circlet! Ah! truly the “Almagest”[13] would make a man a poet in spite of himself; and now you know how a certain look in Margaret’s eyes came there. For who could gaze, night after night, into the great spaces wherein the revolutions of the spheres make melody, and around which the fixed stars are built, in their firmament, into a mighty battlement, without carrying some of the wonder and the glory of it all away in one’s own soul?
In the lighted hall, afterwards, cozy with candlelight and a great log ablaze on the wide hearth, you came back very gently to earth. Such a good earth and a kind earth; not so very far from heaven either, since there was love, and light, and music to keep the roadway free!
Here Dame Alice, taking her capable part in the concert of instrumental music (which you learned is a nightly event in this household), relaxed a little from her attitude of housewifely overcarefulness, and showed you a pleasanter part of her nature. And when you looked round the circle and saw the happy looks of each little performer on harp, and lute, and monochord, and flute, it is odds but your pity was stirred for certain little girls you left behind you in the twentieth century, who spend such miserable, profitless, lonely hours in “practising.” If the “practice hour” were such a jolly re-union of the whole family as it is here, be sure our little maids would get more good out of their music-lessons!
Gradually the instruments were laid carefully aside, and the maid-servants, who had been busy with their spinning and sewing during the concert, prepared the place for the night prayers. One thing surprised you no little, and this was the accuracy with which everyone in the household recited the alternate verses of the psalms chosen: “Miserere,” “Ad Te Domine levavi,” and “Deus misereatur nostri.”
Surely the blessing of God rested visibly on this home, where everything was done to show Him perpetual honour! And so with a sense of great spiritual peace in your heart you came away from your star-watch on the balcony, and presently were lost in blissful dreams in the huge four-poster bed, with its downy pillows and sheets that smelled of lavender.