e fifty years or so; but never saw I one thereof
aforetime. 'Tis bright yellow of plumage, and singeth all one as a
lark: they do call his name canary."

"Nay, forsooth, I never see aught that should do me a pleasure!" said
Mistress Winter crustily. "Gossip Flint might have told me so much.--
Take that, thou lither hussy! I'll learn thee to let fall the knives!"

And on the ear of the unfortunate Agnes, as she was stooping to recover
the dropped knife, came Mistress Winter's hand, with sufficient
heaviness to make her grow white and totter ere she could recover her
balance.

Father Dan took no notice. He could not have afforded to quarrel with
Mistress Winter, especially now when priests of the old style were at a
discount; and in his eyes such creatures as Agnes were made to be beaten
and abused. He merely saw in his hostess a notable housewife, and in
Agnes a kind of animated machine, with just soul enough to be kept to
the duty of confession, and require a careless absolution, three times
in the year. Such people had no business, in Father Dan's eyes, to have
thoughts or feelings of any sort. They were sent into the world to mop
and cook and serve their betters. Of course, when the animated machines
did take to thinking for themselves, and to showing that they had done
so, the Cordelier regarded it as most awkward and inconvenient--a piece
of insubordinate presumption that must be stamped out at once, and not
suffered to infect others.

After further conversation in the same style, being unable to go on
eating and drinking for ever, Father Dan rose to depart. It was not
confession-time, and on all other occasions Father Dan's pastoral visits
came very much under the head of revelling. There was not a syllable of
religious conversation; that was considered peculiar to the
confessional.

Mistress Winter and Dorothy, after a little needlework and some more
scolding of Agnes, tramped upstairs to bed; and Joan, coming in half an
hour later, excessively cross after her day's pleasuring, followed the
example. Having put away the supper things, and laid every thing in
readiness for the morrow's work. Agnes stood for a moment before she
too lay down on her hard pallet in the one chamber above that served all
four as bedroom. Through the uncurtained window high up in the room the
June stars looked down upon her. She had no notion of prayer, except
telling beads to Latin Paters and Aves; but the instinct of t