"

"Ay,--you know!" said Clare, drawing a deep breath of satisfaction.
"Now tell me, Mistress Eunice, what answer find you to this question?
Shall it be with you, as with other, that these be my tasks at school?"

"That is verily sooth, Mistress Clare; yet there is another light
wherein I love the better to look thereat. And it is this: that in this
world be no little things."

"What would you say, Mistress Eunice? In good sooth, it seemeth me the
rather, there be few great."

"I cry you mercy," said Eunice, with her bright smile. "Lo' you,--'tis
after this fashion. The pudding I have made a man shall eat, and
thereby be kept alive. This man shall drop a word to another, which one
passing by shall o'erhear,--on the goodness and desirableness of
learning, I will say. Well, this last shall turn it o'er in his mind,
and shall determine to send his lad to school, and have him well
learned. Time being gone, this lad shall write a book, or shall preach
a sermon, whereby, through the working of God's Spirit, many men's
hearts shall be touched, and led to consider the things that belong unto
their peace. Look you, here is a chain; and in this great chain one
little link is the pudding which I made, twenty years gone."

"But the man could have eaten somewhat else."

"Soothly; but he did not, you see."

"Or another than you could have made the pudding."

"Soothly, again: but I was to make it."

Clare considered this view of the case.

"All things in this world, Mistress Clare, be links in some chain. In
Dutchland [Germany], many years gone now, a young man that studied in an
university there was caught in an heavy thunderstorm. He grew sore
affrighted; all his sins came to his mind: and he prayed Saint Anne to
dispel the storm, promising that he would straightway become a monk.
The storm rolled away, and he suffered no harm. But he was mindful of
his vow, and he became a monk. Well, some time after, having a spare
half-hour, he went to the library to get him a book. As God would have
it, he reached down a Latin Bible, the like whereof he had ne'er seen
aforetime. Through the reading of this book--for I am well assured you
know that I speak of Luther--came about the full Reformation of religion
which, thanks be to God! is now spread abroad. And all this cometh--to
speak after the manner of men--in that one Martin was at one time
affrighted with the thunder; and, at another time, reached him down a
book.