and stitching things on brown paper, and
snipping, and laying the fashions down, and requesting all opinions, yet
when given, scorning them; insomuch that I grew weary even of tobacco
(which had comforted me since Lorna), and prayed her to go on until the
King should be alive again.

The thought of that so flurried her--for she never yet could see a
joke--that she laid her scissors on the table and said, "The Lord
forbid, John! after what I have cut up!"

"It would be just like him," I answered, with a knowing smile: "Mother,
you had better stop. Patterns may do very well; but don't cut up any
more good stuff."

"Well, good lack, I am a fool! Three tables pegged with needles! The
Lord in His mercy keep His Majesty, if ever He hath gotten him!"

By this device we went to bed; and not another stitch was struck until
the troopers had office-tidings that the King was truly dead. Hence the
Snowes beat us by a day; and both old Betty and Lizzie laid the blame
upon me, as usual.

Almost before we had put off the mourning, which as loyal subjects we
kept for the King three months and a week; rumours of disturbances, of
plottings, and of outbreak began to stir among us. We heard of fighting
in Scotland, and buying of ships on the continent, and of arms in Dorset
and Somerset; and we kept our beacon in readiness to give signals of a
landing; or rather the soldiers did. For we, having trustworthy reports
that the King had been to high mass himself in the Abbey of Westminster,
making all the bishops go with him, and all the guards in London, and
then tortured all the Protestants who dared to wait outside, moreover
had received from the Pope a flower grown in the Virgin Mary's garden,
and warranted to last for ever, we of the moderate party, hearing all
this and ten times as much, and having no love for this sour James,
such as we had for the lively Charles, were ready to wait for what might
happen, rather than care about stopping it. Therefore we listened to
rumours gladly, and shook our heads with gravity, and predicted, every
man something, but scarce any two the same. Nevertheless, in our part,
things went on as usual, until the middle of June was nigh. We ploughed
the ground, and sowed the corn, and tended the cattle, and heeded every
one his neighbour's business, as carefully as heretofore; and the only
thing that moved us much was that Annie had a baby. This being a very
fine child with blue eyes, and christened "John"