Then, though our
Scottish king be, God bless him, a true Protestant, yet he is but a
boy; and here is his mother that was our queen--I trust there is no
harm to say, God bless her too--and she is a Catholic; and many begin
to think she has had but hard measure, such as the Hamiltons in the
west, and some of our Border clans here, and the Gordons in the north,
who are all wishing to see a new world; and if such a new world should
chance to come up, it is like that the Queen will take back her own
crown, and that the mass and the cross will come up, and then down go
pulpits, Geneva-gowns, and black silk skull-caps."
"And have you, Master Jasper Wingate, who have heard the word, and
listened unto pure and precious Mr. Henry Warden, have you, I say, the
patience to speak, or but to think, of popery coming down on us like a
storm, or of the woman Mary again making the royal seat of Scotland a
throne of abomination? No marvel that you are so civil to the cowled
monk, Father Ambrose, when he comes hither with his downcast eyes that
he never raises to my Lady's face, and with his low sweet-toned voice,
and his benedicites, and his benisons; and who so ready to take them
kindly as Master Wingate?"
"Mistress Lilias," replied the butler, with an air which was intended
to close the debate, "there are reasons for all things. If I received
Father Ambrose debonairly, and suffered him to steal a word now arid
then with this same Roland Graeme, it was not that I cared a brass
bodle for his benison or malison either, but only because I respected
my master's blood.
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