“What say you, Catherine,” he said, “if we two, thus strangely turned out of service at the same time, should give our two most venerable duennas the torch to hold, while we walk a merry measure with each other over the floor of this weary world?”
“A goodly proposal, truly,” said Catherine, “and worthy the mad-cap brain of a discarded page!—And what shifts does your worship propose we should live by?—by singing ballads, cutting purses, or swaggering on the highway? for there, I think, you would find your most productive exchequer.”
“Choose, you proud peat!” said the page, drawing off in huge disdain at the calm and unembarrassed ridicule with which his wild proposal was received. And as he spoke the words, the casement was again darkened by the forms of the matrons—it opened, and admitted Magdalen Graeme and the Mother Abbess, so we must now style her, into the apartment.
Chapter the Twelfth.
Nay, hear me, brother—I am elder, wiser,
And holier than thou—And age, and wisdom,
And holiness, have peremptory claims,
And will be listen'd to.
OLD PLAY.
When the matrons re-entered, and put an end to the conversation—which we have detailed in the last chapter, Dame Magdalen Graeme thus addressed her grandson and his pretty companion: “Have you spoke together, my children?—Have you become known to each other as fellow-travellers on the same dark and dubious road, whom chance hath brought together, and who study to learn the tempers and dispositions of those by whom their perils are to be shared?”
It was seldom the light-hearted Catharine could suppress a jest, so that she often spoke when she would have acted more wisely in holding her peace.
“Your grandson admires the journey which you propose so very greatly, that he was even now preparing for setting out upon it instantly.”