end, and such a good, pleasant maid
she is!"

Christie did not term her new friend "nice," as she certainly would have
done in the present day. To her ear that word had no meaning except
that of particular and precise--the meaning which we still attach to its
relative "nicety."

"A new friend, forsooth?" said Christie's father with a smile. "And who
is she, sweet heart? Is it Mistress Final's niece, that came to visit
her this last week?"

"Oh no, Father! 'Tis somebody much--ever so much grander! Only think,
the master's daughter, Mistress Pandora Roberts, came with her aunt,
Mistress Holland; and Mistress Holland went on to Cranbrook, and took
Aunt Tabitha with her--she was here when she came--and Mistress Pandora
tarried with me, and talked, till her aunt came back to fetch her. Oh,
she is a sweet maid, and I do love her!"

Roger Hall looked rather grave. He had kept himself, and even more, his
Christie, from the society of outsiders, for safety's sake. For either
of them to be known as a Gospeller, the name then given to the true,
firm-hearted Protestants, would be a dangerous thing for their
liberties, if not their lives. Pandora Roberts was the daughter of a
man who, once a Protestant, had conformed to the Romanised form of
religion restored by Queen Mary, and her uncle was one of the
magistrates on the Cranbrook bench. Roger was sorry to hear that one so
nearly allied to these dangerous people had found his little violet
under the leaves where he had hoped that she was safely hidden. A sharp
pang shot through his heart as the dread possibility rose before him of
his delicate little girl being carried away to share the comfortless
prison of his sister. Such treatment would most likely kill her very
soon. For himself he would have cared far less: but Christie!

He was puzzled how to answer Christie's praises of Pandora. He did not
wish to throw cold water on the child's delight, nor to damage her newly
found friend in her eyes. But neither did he wish to drag her into the
thorny path wherein he had to walk himself--to hedge her round with
perpetual cautions and fears and terrors, lest she should let slip some
word that might be used to their hurt. An old verse says--

"Ye gentlemen of England
That sit at home at ease,
Ye little know the miseries
And dangers of the seas."

And it might be said with even greater truth--Ye men and women, ye boys
and girls of free, peaceful, Protestant