David the King, but excused him, for eating the
shewbread. I am sure Moses would have baptised me this morning, without
waiting for sponsors or Lucca oil. This is a very silly world; I should
have thought the Church might have been a trifle wiser, and really it
seems to have less common sense of the two. How could I have found
sponsors, I should like to know? I know nobody but you and Christian."

"They told us, when we were baptised, that the Church did not allow a
husband and wife to be sponsors to the same person. So we could not
both have stood for you. It would have had to be Christian and Rudolph,
and some other woman."

"Rudolph! That baby! [Note 1.] Would they have let him stand?"

"Yes--if you could not find any one else."

"And promise to bring me up in the Catholic faith? Well, if that is not
rich!--when I have got to bring him up! I will tell you what, David--if
some benevolent saint would put a little common sense into the Church,
it would be a blessing to somebody. `The Church!' I am weary of that
ceaseless parrot scream. The Church stands in the way to Jesus of
Nazareth, not as a door to go in, but as a wall to bar out. I wish we
had lived in earlier days, before all that rubbish had had time to grow.
Now, mind you," concluded Countess, as she rose to go to bed, "David
and Christian, I don't mean to be bothered about this. Don't talk to
me, nor to Rudolph, nor to any body else. I shall read the Book, and
teach him to do it; but I shall not pray to those gilded things; and he
shall not. What Gerhardt taught is enough for him and me. And
remember, if too much be said, the King's officers may come and take
every thing away. I do not see that it is my duty to go and tell them.
If they come, let them come, and God be my aid and provider! Otherwise,
we had better keep quiet."

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Note 1. That little children were at times allowed to be sponsors in
the Middle Ages, is proved by the instance of John Earl of Kent in 1330,
whose brother and sister, the former probably under ten years of age,
and the latter aged only eighteen months, stood sponsors for him.
(_Prob. aet. Johannis Com. Kant._, 23 Edward Third, 76.)

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

WELL MET.

"O God, we are but leaves upon Thy stream,
Clouds in Thy sky."

Dinah Mulock.

A busy place on a Monday morning was Bread Street, in the city of
London. As its n