SELWICK HALL, JANUARY YE XXI. _Blanche_ is gone home at last. Aunt _Joyce_ and I went thither this last night with her, her mother having wrung consent from her father that she should come. For all that was the scene distressful, for Master _Lewthwaite_ kept not in divers sharp speeches, and _Blanche_ (that is sore wanting in reverence to her elders) would answer back as she should not: but at the last Mistress _Lewthwaite_ gat them peaced, and _Alice_ and _Blanche_ went off together. _Alice_ behaved better than my fears. But, dear heart, to my thinking, how hard and proud is _Blanche_! Why, she would brazen it out that she hath done none ill of no kind. The good Lord open her eyes! When we came out from _Mere Lea_, and were come down the garden path, Aunt _Joyce_ stood a moment on the hill-side, her eyes lift up to the still stars. "Good Lord!" then saith she, "how hard be we poor sinful men and women, each to other, and how much more forbearing art Thou against whom we have sinned! Make Thou Thy servants more like Thyself!" And then away, with a quick foot, and never an other word spake she till we gat us home. SELWICK HALL, JANUARY YE XXVII. When I come to read o'er that I have writ, I find I have said rare little touching _Ned_. And in very deed it is not that I meant to keep him out, for _Ned_ is my very hero, and my true thought is that never yet were young man so brave and good, nor so well-favoured. I must say I would I could conceive his talk better: for 'tis all so stuffed with sea-words that I would fain have an interpreter. _Ned_ laughs when I say this. "Well," saith he, "'tis the strangest thing in the world you should not conceive me. 'Tis all along of you being maids, I reckon." "Nay," say I, "'tis by reason we were ne'er at sea." "Well, how any human creature can be a landlubber," saith _Ned_, "when he might have a good boat and a stiff capful o' wind, passeth me rarely." "Why," quoth _Father_, that had listed us in silence till now, "if we were all sailors and mermen, _Ned_, how wouldst come by a sea-biscuit or a lump of salt meat? There should be none to sow nor reap, if the land were deserted." "Oh ay, 'tis best some should love it," saith _Ned_. "But how they so should, that is it passeth me." "'Tis a strange matter," saith _Father_, "that we men should be all of us unable to guess how other men can affect that we love not. I dare be bound that _Wat_ should say what passed him was that any man which might dwell on the land should take to the sea." "_Wat_!" saith Ned, curling of his lip. "I saw him, Sir, and spent two days in his company, when we touched at _London_ some eight months gone. Why, he is--Nay, I wis not what he is like. All the popinjays in the South Seas be fools to him." "Is he so fine, _Ned_?" asks _Milly_.