ed Mistress Ratcliffe; but the moment the question was asked,
she repented showing any curiosity about it, and made a diversion to
prevent a reply by suddenly breaking into admiration of the lace which
trimmed Dorothy Ratcliffe's bodice.

'It is Flemish point, sure; and did it not descend to you, Doll, from your
grandmother? I have a passion for old lace; and these sapphires of your
brooch are of fine water. Now, shall we repair to the parlour, and you,
Dorothy, will discourse some sweet music on your mandoline.'

The parlour was a dark room, with oak panels, and a heavy beam across the
ceiling. The floor was polished oak, which was slippery to unwary feet. The
open fireplace was filled by a large beau-pot filled with a posy of flowing
shrubs and long grass and rushes.

Rushes were strewn on the raised floor of the square bay window. A
spinning-wheel stood there, and the stool of carved oak, where Mistress
Ratcliffe sat when at her work, that she might have an eye to any who came
in at the gate, and perhaps catch one of the serving-maids gossiping with a
passer-by.

There was a settle in one corner of the parlour, and a cupboard with
shelves in a recess in the thick wall. Here the silver was kept, and some
curious old figures which had been, like the plate, handed down from the
ancestors of whom Mistress Ratcliffe was so proud.

In another recess were a few books, in heavy vellum bindings--Tyndale's
translation of the Bible, with silver clasps; and some dull sermons,
roughly bound, with an early edition of the Boke of Chess; the prayer-book
of Edward the Sixth, and some smaller and insignificant volumes, completed
Mistress Ratcliffe's library.

Mistress Ratcliffe did not concern herself with the awakening life of these
remarkable times in literature and culture.

It was nothing to her that numerous poets and authors, from Edmund Spenser
to many humbler craftsmen of the pen, were busy translating from the
Italian the tales of Boccaccio, or the Latin of Virgil.

The horizon had not yet widened to the small landed proprietors of these
days, and education, as we understand the word, was confined to the few,
and had not reached the people to whom the concerns of everyday life were
all-important. Women like Mistress Ratcliffe could often scarcely write
their own names, and read slowly and with difficulty the psalms in their
prayer-book, or the lessons of the Church in their Bible.

Spelling was eccentric, even in the