"For Roger and I have looked well all through the Gospels to see. And the Pharisee despised, the Priest and the Levite passed by, and the disciples said once or twice, send her away. But the Lord drew near, called them to Him, touched, took in His arms, loved, always loved. Loved when they were wandering--loved when they would not come; loved even when they 'went away.' "And Aunt Gretel thinks the same. Only I sometimes wish we had lived in the times she speaks of, told of in certain Family Chronicles of hers, a century old. For then it was the people with the wrong religion who despised others, and were harsh and severe. And they went into convents, which must have been a great relief to the rest of the family. And now it seems to be the people with the right religion who do like the Pharisees. And they stay at home, which is more difficult to understand, and more unpleasant to bear." A very vehement utterance, crossed through with repentant lines in after times, but still quite legible, and of interest to me for the vanished outer world of life, and the tumultuous inward world of revolt it recalls. For that May morning, on my way home through the wood, I met the village lads and lasses bringing home the May; and when I reached the house, it was late; the serving men and maidens had finished their meal at the long table in the hall, and Aunt Dorothy sat at one end on the table, which crossed it at the top, and span; and Cousin Placidia sat silent at the other end and span, the whirr of their spinning-wheels distinctly reproaching me in a steady hum of displeasure, until I was constrained to reply to it and to Aunt Dorothy's silence. "Aunt Dorothy, prithee, forgive me. I only went to bathe my face in the May dew by the Lady Well. And there I met Lettice Davenant." "I never reproached thee, child," said Aunt Dorothy. "There is too much license in this house for that. But this, I will say, the excuse is worse than the fault. How often have I told thee not to stain thy lips with the idolatrous title of that well? And as to bathing thy face in the May dew, Olive, it is Popery--sheer Popery." "Not Popery, sister Dorothy," said my Father, looking up from his sheet of news just brought from London. "Not Popery; Paganism. The custom dates back to the ancient Romans, probably to the festival of the goddess Maia, mother of Mercury, but here antiquarians are divided." "And well they may be," said Aunt Dorothy, "what but sects and divisions can be expected from such tampering with vanities and idolatries? For my part, it matters little to me whether the custom dates to the modern or the ancient Romans, or to the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, and the Jebusites. Whoever painted the idol, I have little doubt who made it. And of the two I like the unchristened idols best."