“Shall I trim it, mother?” asks her companion, a fair boy, who does not seem equally loath to look up from the pages of a great book he has been reading aloud. The volume, “imprinted at London, by John Day and William Seres,” consists of the collected theological writings of the Reformer Thomas Becon, and certainly is not just what an ordinary boy would have chosen for his private enjoyment. But Walter Grey is not an ordinary boy; and if he had been, those were days in which young people did the pleasure of their elders, not their own. “I think it needs not,” the mother answered. Then, perhaps surmising that the boy was tired of reading, she asked him, “Dost remember any of thy cousins, Walter?” “None but George, mother. Do you not mind the year you had the great fever, and my aunt came here to tend you? How she brought George, a ten years’ bairn, with her; for she said he was so masterful, and of such high stomach, none of the maids durst attempt to keep him under? And a proper life we led each other, he and I. The very night he came we fought together. He called me an outlandish imp, and no true Englishman, because I was born at Geneva; and I for answer fetched him a buffet on the cheek.” “Ill-conditioned boy! Even at seven years old, you should have known better than to strike your little guest.” “Marry, mother, he paid me, and with usury,” laughed Walter. “But if I had had the wit, I might have given him a better answer. I might have said he would have been born at Geneva too, an his father had not thought more of his silks and satins than of his conscience.” “Therein thou wouldst have shown thine unwisdom as well as thy discourtesy. In Queen Mary’s days thine Uncle Noble did not yet know the gospel; how then could he go into exile for it? In truth, it was what he saw, in those evil times, of the faith and patience of the saints that, with God’s blessing, won him to a better mind. I have heard him say so myself. And as for thy comrade George,” she added more lightly, “I daresay his love of fighting stands him in good stead now, when he meets the Dons upon the high seas.” Walter’s face, naturally fair and pale, was overspread in an instant by a crimson flush, telling of some strong hidden feeling suddenly awakened. But it passed as quickly as it came; and he said, in his ordinary tone, “Mother, I pray you, tell me the names of all my cousins. ’Twere as well I knew them, at least after a fashion, ere I saw them.”