'She is slender and pale, Jenny.'
'A fine wife that for Welltown! Pale and weak: that be as I dreamed. But it were no dream—it were a revelation. What sort be her as to her religion? Be her a Churchwoman, or one of God's elect?'
'That is an unfair way of putting it,' laughed Herring.
'I put it the way it be written in the Book of Light,' answered Genefer, doggedly.
'She is a Roman Catholic,' said Herring. 'I hope now you are satisfied.'
'See there!' exclaimed Genefer. 'What sez the Scriptur?—"Thou shalt not plough with the ox and the ass together." What do that mean but that two of a sort should run together under the same yoke of matrimony? If you be Church, take a Church wife; if you be a Cornishman, don't fetch an ass out of Devon to plough the lands of Welltown wi' you. What sez the prophet?—"Can two walk together except they be agreed?" Here be you two arn't agreed about what be chiefest of all, and how will you walk together along the way of life?'
'My dear Jenny, you have had the management so long that you presume. I am not any longer a boy to be ordered about, and I must insist on no more of this sort of interference with my affairs. You acted as a mother to me when I was deprived as an infant of my own natural mother, and I shall ever love you dearly for all you have done for me. But, Jenny, there are limits to forbearance, and you transgress.'
'Ah, sure!' exclaimed Genefer Benoke, 'it were I as made you what you 'm be. I didn't spoil you as some would have done. You 'm a good and proper squire, because I trained the sapling. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," said the wise king, Master John, when the old miners were seeking a lode they took a hazel-rod in their hands, and they went over the ground a holding of thicky. And when they passed above a lode the rod turned in their hands. It were all the same wi' hidden treasure. I've a heard of a Trevalga man, as he went over the mounds of Bosinney wi' such a divining-rod, and it turned, and he dug and found King Arthur's golden crown and table. It be all the same with mortal earth. If you want to bring to light the pure ore, the hidden treasure, you must go over it wi' a stick. There be good metal in you, Master John, and you may thank your old nurse that her didn't spare the rod. Her explored you pretty freely with the divining-wand.'
'I am thankful, Genefer,' said Herring, laughing; 'I recall many of these same explorations, and they have left on me an ineffaceable respect for you, and some fear is mingled with the love I bear you.'
'It is right it should be so. What 'ud you have been without me? Your mother died when you was a baby. Your father couldn't be a nursing of you by night and day. It were I as did all that. I'd had a chance child,'—in a self-exculpatory tone, 'the lambs o' the Lord must play;' then louder: 'and I'd a lost it. I did everything for you, I were a proper mother to you, and so it be that I love you as my own child; and as the Lord has not seen fit to give me none of my own body, saving that chance child as died—and I reckon the stock of Hender be too crabbed and sour to be worth perpetuating—what have I to live for, and care for, and provide for, but you? And see this, Master John. King David said as the Lord rained snares out of heaven: snares be ropes with nooses at the end; and King David sez the Lord hangs these out of every cloud, whereby them as walks unawares may hang themselves. What be them hangman's ropes dangling about, thick as rain-streaks, but all those things God has made, and with which he surrounds us, by which we may lift ourselves above the earth if we be prudent; but if we be fools, then we shall strangle ourselves therein. I reckon the new mistress be one of the Lord's snares hanging down out of heaven. If you use a wife properly, and lay hold of her, and pull yourself up by her, then you will mount to heaven; but if you let her get round your throat, her'll sure to throttle you. That be what makes me badwaddled' (troubled) 'about you, now I see you wi' such a rope before you. Keep your feet and hands a working up her, and don't you never let her knot herself round you.'