“And now they’re eating the apples!” cried Colin; “and God will be angry! They know He will be angry. See, they’re hiding themselves. They can hear His voice!”
And presently, while they watched, God Almighty came down the steps which led from Heaven to Paradise, and entered the garden. Here he questioned Adam and Eve, and afterwards turned to the serpent and cursed him. Then, holding a flashing sword above the heads of the guilty man and woman, He told them of their punishment; and finally drove them weeping from the garden, down to the earth, upon which they were henceforth to live.
The Armourers’ pageant was by this time waiting its turn at the corner of the market-place, and when the Coopers’ scaffold was dragged away it speedily took its place.
“Now we shall see Adam and Eve’s life on the earth,” said the lawyer, who had come to the window, and was standing just behind the children.
The curtains before the stage were drawn back, and Adam and Eve, no longer happy and light-hearted, were seen on the earth, where henceforth they had to work in sorrow and suffering. As they sadly talked together, an angel with golden wings appeared to them. To Adam he gave a spade, bidding him till the ground, and to Eve a distaff, commanding her to work for her household.
The Glovers’ play came next. The characters in it were Cain and Abel, and the story told of the murder of Abel by Cain, and of Cain’s punishment.
It was all very interesting to the children, but they were looking forward so eagerly to the following pageant that they could not refrain from glancing every now and again towards the corner of the market-place at which it would appear.
Noah’s ark was the subject, and the lawyer, Master Gyseburn, had told them it would be an amusing play.
It did not seem strange to any of the people assembled that a few of the plays should be written on purpose to make the audience laugh. It had long been the custom to make into comic scenes one or two of the Bible stories in which no sacred characters appeared. The monks who wrote the plays remembered how long and how patiently the crowd had to stand, and they thought that if the people sometimes laughed, their attention would be kept fresh for the more serious part of the Bible teaching.
So Colin and Margery heard without surprise and with joyful anticipation that Noah’s wife would be very funny. They were exceedingly anxious also to see the ark, which Master Gyseburn described as a wonderful piece of work.