answered. The clergyman himself
alone sat down to supper with his guests. He would not hear of letting
either of his children do so; but while Dust-and-Ashes retired to study
his tasks for the Grammar School by firelight, Oil-of-Gladness assisted
Goody in waiting, in a deft and ready manner pleasant to behold.

No sooner did Mr. Talbot mention the name Cicely than Master
Heatherthwayte looked up and said--"Methinks it was I who spake that
name over this young lady in baptism."

"Even so," said Richard. "She knoweth all, but she hath ever been our
good and dutiful daughter, for which we are the more thankful that
Heaven hath given us none other maid child."

He knew Master Heatherthwayte was inclined to curiosity about other
people's affairs, and therefore turned the discourse on the doings of
his sons, hoping to keep him thus employed and avert all further
conversation upon Cicely and the cause of the journey. The good man
was most interested in Edward, only he exhorted Mr. Talbot to be
careful with whom he bestowed the stripling at Cambridge, so that he
might shed the pure light of the Gospel, undimmed by Popish obscurities
and idolatries.

He began on his objections to the cross in baptism and the ring in
marriage, and dilated on them to his own satisfaction over the tankard
of ale that was placed for him and his guest, and the apples and nuts
wherewith Cicely was surreptitiously feeding Oil-of-Gladness and
Dust-and-Ashes; while the old woman bustled about, and at length made
her voice heard in the announcement that the chamber was ready, and the
young lady was weary with travel, and it was time she was abed, and Oil
likewise.

Though not very young children, Oil and Dust, at a sign from their
father, knelt by his chair, and uttered their evening prayers aloud,
after which he blessed and dismissed them--the boy to a shake-down in
his own room, the girl to the ecstasy of assisting the guest to
undress, and admiring the wonders of the very simple toilette apparatus
contained in her little cloak bag.

Richard meantime was responding as best he could to the inquiries he
knew would be inevitable as soon as he fell in with the Reverend Master
Heatherthwayte. He was going to London in the Mastiff on some business
connected with the Queen of Scots, he said.

Whereupon Mr. Heatherthwayte quoted something from the Psalms about the
wicked being taken in their own pits, and devoutly hoped she would not
escape this