Our Little Lady | Page 8

on the hearth licking his lips while the process of helping went on, knowing that his reward would come at last. Manikin trotted off into the yard with his treasure, and Agnes came back to the table and the subject.
"Truly, holy Father, I know not how to thank you. But indeed I will do my best to deserve your good word, should it please God so to order the same."
"I doubt not thou wilt do well, my daughter. Bear thou in mind that Christ our Lord is thy Master, and thy service must be good enough to be laid at His feet. Then shalt thou well serve the Queen."
Agnes was a very ignorant woman. Bishop Grosteste, being himself a wise man, could not at all realise how ignorant she was. She knew very little how to serve God, but she did really wish to do it. And that, after all, is the great thing. Those who have the will can surely, sooner or later, find out how.
When the guests were gone, Agnes threw another log of wood upon the fire, and came and stood before it. "Well, Mother, what must we do touching this matter? Verily I am all of a tumblement. What think you?"
"I think, my daughter," said old Muriel calmly from the chimney-corner, "that we are not going to set forth for London within this next half-hour."
"Nay, truly; yet we must think well on it."
"We shall do well to sleep on it, and yet better to ask counsel of the Lord."
"But we must go, Mother! It would never do to offend the holy Bishop!"
"Bishop Robert my brother is not he that should be angered because we preferred God's counsel to his. But it may be that we shall find, after prayer and thought, that his counsel is God's."
It was to that conclusion they came the next day.
After the Bishop's departure, for a long time all was bustle and confusion. Agnes declared that she did not know where her head was, nor sometimes whether she had any. Avice was at the height of enjoyment. Old Muriel went quietly about her work, keeping at it, "doing the next thing," and got through more work than either.
The Bishop did all he could to help them. He found them a tenant for the house, lent them money--all his money not spent on real necessaries was either lent or given to such as needed it more than he did; and at last he sent them southwards on his own horses, and in charge of three of his servants. From Lincoln to Windsor was a five days' journey of rather long stages; and when at last they reached the royal borough, simple--minded Agnes had begun to feel as if no further power of astonishment were left in her mind.
"Dear, I never thought the world was so big!" she had said before they left Grantham; and when they arrived at Aylesbury, her cry was--"Eh, what a power of folks be in this world!"
Old Muriel took her journey, as she did everything, calmly. She, like Bishop Grosteste himself, lived too much with God to be easily startled or overawed by the grandeur of man. Avice was in a state of excitement and delight through the whole time.
They slept at a small inn; and the next morning, one of the Bishop's servants, who had received his orders beforehand, took up to the Castle a letter from his master, and waited to hear when it would please the Queen to see them. He came back in an hour, with the news that the Queen would receive them that afternoon.
Agnes was in a condition of restless flutter till the time came. Then they dressed themselves in their very best, and Luke, the Bishop's servant, took them up to the Castle.
If Agnes had felt confused at the mere idea of her interview, she found the reality still more overwhelming than she expected. The first thing she realised was that she stood in an immense hall, surrounded by what seemed to her a crowd of very smart gentlemen. Then they were led through passages and galleries, upstairs and downstairs, till Agnes felt as though she could never hope to find her way back; and at last, in a very handsome room, where the walls were covered with painting, and the furniture upholstered in silk, they came into the midst of a second crowd of very grand ladies. By this time poor Agnes had quite lost her head; and when one of the fine ladies asked her what she wanted, she could only drop a succession of courtesies and look totally bewildered. Old Muriel managed better.
"Under your leave, Madam, we have been sent for by my Lady the Queen."
"Oh, are you the people who come about the nurses' place?" said the young