During this time, Mistress Winter's piety had been blooming in a wonderful manner. She kept Saint Thomas of Canterbury on a small table, with a lamp burning before it, and every morning diligently courtesied to this stock and stone. When her hands were not otherwise busied, a rosary was pretty sure to be found in them, on which she recounted Paters and Aves with amazing celerity. The bitterness of her tongue kept pace with her show of religiousness. Ugly adjectives, and uglier substantives, were flung at Agnes all the day long, and whether she deserved reproof or not appeared to make no difference. But though words and even blows were not spared, Mistress Winter went no further. Agnes was much too useful to be denounced as a heretic, at least so long as she remained at her post in Cow Lane. She did all the unpleasant work in the house, besides filling the convenient offices of a vent for Joan's temper, and a butt for Dorothy's ridicule. But though getting rid of her was not to be thought of, words were cheap, however peppery, and a box on the ear was a great relief to the feelings of the giver-- those of the recipient not being taken into account. So Agnes got plenty of both. "Sweet-heart, how earnest by yonder black eye?" anxiously demanded John Laurence, on the last Sunday afternoon in January, when Agnes and he were coming back from their favourite stroll towards Clerkenwell. "'Tis nought new, belike," said she with a smile. "Please God," returned he, "it shall be ancient matter and by-gone, very soon." He stood still a moment, looking over the crowded chimneys of the City, just beyond the green field through which they were walking. "Doth the thought e'er come to thy mind, Agnes," asked he, "how soon all things shall be bygones? At the most afore many years,--yea, afore many days, it may be,--thou and I shall be away hence from this world. And even this great city, that doth look thus firm and substantial, ere long shall not be left thereof one trace. Yea, heaven and earth shall pass away: but Christ's words shall not pass away." Agnes listened with interest, but gave no answer beyond a gesture of assent. "I have fallen to think much of late," said the Black Friar, "of one word of His,--assuredly not to pass away, nor be forgotten--`Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in Heaven.' Verily, it were awful matter, to draw down on a man's head this public denying of Jesu Christ." "Dear heart!" said Agnes, at once sympathetically and deprecatingly. "Ah!" he replied, with a sigh of self-distrust: "hope is one matter, and belief another." "Dost fear some ill work, trow?" she asked doubtfully. John Laurence did not answer at once. He spoke after a minute, dreamily, as if to himself; a habit to which Agnes was now quite accustomed.