"He said he had never thought touching the marriage of Thekla, for he looked thereon until now as a thing afar off, like as we of Robin. But (quoth he) he did suppose in all likelihood she should leave him sometime, if God willed it thus; but it should be sore when it came. And the water stood in his eyes." "Looked he thereon kindly or no, thinkest?" "I am somewhat doubtful," and John dropped his voice, "though I would not say so much to Robin, whether or no he looketh kindly on her marrying at all. Thou wist, sweet heart, for thou heardst him to say so much,--that he hath some thought that there shall yet be great persecution in this land, and that Gospellers shall (in a worldly and temporal sense) come but ill off. And to have Thekla wife unto a priest--I might see it liked him very evil for her sake. Yet he dimitted it not lightly, but passed word to talk it over with his wife: but he said he would never urge Thekla to wed any, contrariwise unto her own fantasy." The Monday morning brought Mrs Rose. Isoult felt glad, when she saw her, that John had taken Robin with him to Westminster. The two ladies had a long private conference in Isoult's closet or boudoir. Mrs Rose evidently was not going to stand in the way; she rather liked the proposed match. She had strongly urged her husband to tell Thekla, which, against his own judgment, he had at last consented to do. For Thekla's mother regarded her as a marvel of wisdom and discretion, while her father, being himself a little wiser, thought less of her wonderful powers, though he admitted that she was very sensible--for her years. "She is a good child--Thekla," said Mrs Rose, in her foreign manner; "a good child--but she dreameth too much. She is not for the life, rather a dreamer. She would read a great book each day sooner than to spin. But she doth the right; she knoweth that she must to spin, and she spin. But she carrieth her thoughts up a great way off, into strange gear whither I cannot follow. See you, Mistress Avery, how I would say? I, I am a plain woman: I make the puddings, I work the spinning--and I love the work. Thekla, she only work the spinning and make the puddings, because she must to do it. She will do the right, alway, but she will not love the work." Isoult quite understood her, and so she told her. "She do not come after me in her liking," pursued she, "rather it is her father. And it is very good, very good to read the great books, and look at the stars, and to talk always of what the great people do, and of what mean the prophet by this, and the saint by that: but for me it is too much. I do not know what the great people should do. I make my puddings. The great people must go their own way. They not want my pudding, and I not want their great things. But Thekla and Mr Rose are both so good! Only, when they talk together, they sit both of them on the top of my head; I am down beneath, doing my spinning."