SELWICK HALL, NOVEMBER YE XXVII. With Aunt _Joyce_ this morrow to visit old _Nanny Crewdson_, that is brother's widow to _Isaac_, and dwelleth in a cot up _Thirlmere_ way. I would fain have avoided the same an' I might, for I never took no list in visiting poor folk, and sithence I have wist my right noble _Protection_ do I take lesser than ever. In very deed, all relish is gone for me out of every thing but him and the jolly Court doings whereof he tells me. And I am ever so much happier than I was of old, with nought but humdrum matter; only that now and then, for a short while, I am a deal more miserabler. I cannot conceive what it is that cometh o'er me at those times. 'Tis like as if I were dancing on flowers, and some unseen hand did now and then push aside the flowers, and I saw a great and horrible black gulf underneath, and that one false step should cast me down therein. Nor will any thing comfort me, at those times, but to talk with my _Protection_, that can alway dispel the gloom. But the things around, that I have been bred up in, do grow more and more distasteful unto me than ever. Howbeit, I am feared to show folk the same, so when Aunt _Joyce_ called me to come with her to _Nanny_, I made none ado, but tied on mine hood and went. We found old _Nanny_--that is too infirm for aught but to sit of a chair in the sunshine--so doing by the window, beside her a little table, and thereon a great Bible open, with her spectacles of her nose, that she pulled off and wiped, and set down of the book to keep her place. "Well, _Nanny_!" saith Aunt _Joyce_. "`Sitting down under His shadow,' dear heart?" "Ay, Mistress _Joyce_," saith she, "and `with great delight.'" I marvel if old folk do really like to read the Bible. I never did. And the older I grow, the lesser doth it like me. Can they mean it, trow? If they do, then I suppose I shall like it when I am as old as _Nanny_. But, good lack! what gloomsome manner of life must that be, wherein one shall find one's diversion in reading of the Bible! I know _Father_ and _Mother_ would say clean contrary. But they, see you, were bred up never to see a Bible in _English_ till they were grown: which is as different as can be to the like of us maids, that never knew the day when it lay not of the hall table. But therein runs my pen too fast, for _Anstace_ can well remember Queen _Mary's_ time, though _Nell_ scarce can do so,--only some few matters here and there. So then Aunt _Joyce_ and _Nan_ fell a-talking,--and scarce so much as a word could I conceive. [Note 1.] They might well-nigh as good have talked _Greek_ for me. Yet one matter will I set down the which I mean to think o'er--some time, when I am come to divert me with the Bible, and am as old as _Nanny_. Not now, of course. "Where art reading, _Nanny_?" saith Aunt _Joyce_.