and Agnes came back to the
table and the subject.

"Truly, holy Father, I know not how to thank you. But indeed I will do
my best to deserve your good word, should it please God so to order the
same."

"I doubt not thou wilt do well, my daughter. Bear thou in mind that
Christ our Lord is thy Master, and thy service must be good enough to be
laid at His feet. Then shalt thou well serve the Queen."

Agnes was a very ignorant woman. Bishop Grosteste, being himself a wise
man, could not at all realise how ignorant she was. She knew very
little how to serve God, but she did really wish to do it. And that,
after all, is the great thing. Those who have the will can surely,
sooner or later, find out how.

When the guests were gone, Agnes threw another log of wood upon the
fire, and came and stood before it. "Well, Mother, what must we do
touching this matter? Verily I am all of a tumblement. What think
you?"

"I think, my daughter," said old Muriel calmly from the chimney-corner,
"that we are not going to set forth for London within this next
half-hour."

"Nay, truly; yet we must think well on it."

"We shall do well to sleep on it, and yet better to ask counsel of the
Lord."

"But we must go, Mother! It would never do to offend the holy Bishop!"

"Bishop Robert my brother is not he that should be angered because we
preferred God's counsel to his. But it may be that we shall find, after
prayer and thought, that his counsel is God's."

It was to that conclusion they came the next day.

After the Bishop's departure, for a long time all was bustle and
confusion. Agnes declared that she did not know where her head was, nor
sometimes whether she had any. Avice was at the height of enjoyment.
Old Muriel went quietly about her work, keeping at it, "doing the next
thing," and got through more work than either.

The Bishop did all he could to help them. He found them a tenant for
the house, lent them money--all his money not spent on real necessaries
was either lent or given to such as needed it more than he did; and at
last he sent them southwards on his own horses, and in charge of three
of his servants. From Lincoln to Windsor was a five days' journey of
rather long stages; and when at last they reached the royal borough,
simple--minded Agnes had begun to feel as if no further power of
astonishment were left in her mind.

"Dear, I never thought the world was so big!" she had said before they
left Gra