th a fortune dropped from the clouds, that thou art all
of a grin o' mirth?"

"I met with nought save that I went for," replied the girl quietly. But
it struck her that the comparison of "a fortune dropped from the clouds"
was a singularly happy one.

"Lack-a-daisy!" cried Dorothy. "The Friar must have told some merry
tale belike. Prithee, give us the same, Agnes."

"Methinks it were scantly so merry for you, Mistress Doll," answered
Agnes rather keenly. The stranger must not intermeddle with her joy.
She held her new treasure with a tight, jealous grasp. Not yet had she
learned that the living water flows the fuller for every streamlet that
it fills; that the true riches are heaped the higher, the more lavish is
the hand that transmits them.

"Hold thy silly tongue!" cried Mistress Winter, turning sharply round
upon her daughter. "It were jolly work to fall of idle tale-telling,
when all the work in the house gapeth for to be done!--Thou weary,
dreary jade! what art thou after now? (Agnes was hastily mending a rent
in the curtain.) To fall to dainty stitchery, like a gentlewoman born,
when every one of the trenchers lacketh scraping, and not the touch of a
mop have the walls felt this morrow! Who dost look to, to slave for
thee, prithee, my delicate-fingered damsel? Thou shouldst like well, I
reckon, to have a serving-maid o' thy heels, for to 'tend to all matter
that was not sweet enough for thy high degree! _I_ go not about to
sweep up the dirt off thy shoes, and so I tell thee plainly!"

Certainly there was not often any want of perspicuity in Mistress
Winter's admonitions, though there might occasionally be a little lack
of elegance and gentleness. But plainly told or not, Agnes remained
silent, scraped the wooden trenchers, a process which answered to the
washing of earthenware, and duly mopped the walls, and to the best of
her power fulfilled the hard pleasure of her superior.

And here let us leave her for a moment, while we take a glance at the
outer world, to discover where we are in the stream of time, and what
sort of an England it is into which we have entered.

The day, the festival of Corpus Christi, is the first of June, 1553.
King Edward the Sixth is on the throne--a white-faced, grave, reserved
boy of fifteen years, whose life is to close about five weeks
thereafter. But beside the throne, and on it in all but name--his hand
firmly grasping the reins of power, his voice the living l