"Not quite, sister Dorothy, not always," remonstrated my Father, "it is certainly a great mistake to worship the Virgin Mary. But the Moloch to whom they burned little children was worse, much worse." "If he was, the less we hear about him the better, Brother," said Aunt Dorothy. "But as to the burning I see little difference. You can see the black sites of Queen Mary's fires still. And Lettice Davenant has been up at the court of the new Queen Marie (as they call her);--an unlucky name for England. And little good she or hers are like to do to our Olive." On which I turned wholly into a boiling caldron of indignation; and to what it might have led I know not, had not Aunt Gretel at that moment intervened, ruddy from the kitchen fire, and with the glow of a pleasant purpose in her kindly blue eyes. "They are like to have the blithest May to-day they have seen for many a year," said she. "Our Margery, the daughter of Tib the dairywoman, is to be queen. And a better maiden or a sweeter face there is not in all the country side. And Dickon, the gardener's son at the Hall, is her sweetheart, and the Lady Lucy Davenant has let them deck the bower with posies from her own garden, and they are coming from the Hall, the Lady Lucy and Sir Walter, and Mistress Lettice and her five brothers, to see the jollity." "Tell Tib's goodman to broach a barrel of the best ale, sister Gretel," said my Father, "and we will go and see." This was said in the tone Aunt Dorothy never answered, and she made no remonstrance except through the whirr of her spinning-wheel, which always seemed to Roger and me to be a kind of "_famulus_," or a second-self to Aunt Dorothy (of course of a white not a black kind), saying the thing she meant but would not say, and in a thousand ways spinning out and completing, not her thread only, but her life and thought. My Father soon rose and went to the farm. Aunt Dorothy span silent at one end of the table, and Cousin Placidia at the other; while I sat too indignant to eat anything, and Aunt Gretel moved about in a helpless, conciliatory state between. "The Bible does speak of being merry, sister Dorothy," said she at length, metaphorically putting her foot into Aunt Dorothy's spiritual spinning, as she was wont to do. "No doubt it does," said Aunt Dorothy. "'Is any merry among you, let him sing psalms.'" "I am sure I wish they would," said Aunt Gretel, "there is nothing I enjoy so much. And," pursued she, waxing bold, "after all, sister Dorothy, the whole world does seem to sing and dance in the green May, the little birds hop and sing, (sing love-songs too, sister Dorothy), and the leaves dance and rustle, and the flowers don all the colours of the rainbow."