?"

"You may have her, and keep her, for all the good she is to me,"
answered the clothier's wife, moving away. "Mind she doesn't give you
the malady, Rose Allen: that's all I say! It's a fair infection going
about, and the great doctors up to London 'll have to come down and look
to it--see if they don't! Oh, my lady can go if it like her--she's so
grand now o' days I'm very nigh afeared of her. Good-morrow!"

And Rose went out with her parcel, lost in wonder as to what could be
the matter--first with Mistress Clere, and then with her friend
Elizabeth.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE CLOUDS BEGIN TO GATHER.

"Methinks that becomes me better. What sayest thou, Bess?"

Two girls were standing in an upper room of Nicholas Clere's house, and
the younger asked this question of the elder. The elder girl was tall,
of stately carriage and graceful mien, with a very beautiful face: but
her whole aspect showed that she thought nothing about herself, and
never troubled her head to think whether she was pretty or ugly. The
younger, who was about seventeen, was not nearly so handsome; but she
would have been pleasant enough to look at if it had not been for a
silly simper and a look of intensely satisfied vanity, which quite
spoiled any prettiness that she might have had. She had just fastened a
pair of ear-rings into her ears, and she was turning her head from one
side to the other before the mirror, as she asked her companion's
opinion of the ornaments.

There are some savages--in Polynesia, I think--who decorate themselves
by thrusting a wooden stick through their lips. To our European taste
they look hideous, honestly, I cannot see that they who make holes in
their lips in order to ornament themselves are any worse at all than
they who make holes in their ears for the same purpose. The one is just
as thorough barbarism as the other.

When Amy Clere thus appealed to her to express an opinion, Elizabeth
Foulkes looked up from her sewing and gave it.

"No, Mistress Amy; I do scarce think it."

"Why, wouldst thou better love these yellow ones?"

"To speak truth, Mistress Amy, I think you look best without either."

"Dear heart, to hear the maid! Wouldst not thou fain have a pair,
Bess?"

"Nay, Mistress Amy, that would I not."

"Wherefore?"

"Because, as methinks, such tawdry gewgaws be unworthy a Christian
profession. If you desire my thought thereon, Mistress Amy, you have it
now."

"Forsooth, and thou m