i b8cff8977b3b1bd2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

herself quite understood. “Puritan” was an insulting epithet, never used kindly, and yet was that not precisely what John and so many others in the eastern counties were trying to do? “Purify” their beloved church of its more venal bishops and of the Roman idolatries, so as to rely only on the Word of God for all their worship - as put forth in the Bible, and in no other place.
    Lucy twitched her shoulders and returned to her spinning. “You see,” she said, “what comes of letting children roam about unhindered, to learn foul words . . . and if you will permit me, Father,” she glanced at Adam, who was watching his two daughters quizzically, “my conscience bids me say that all this wine-bibbing, and talk of dancing and romping much disturbs my mother on her bed of pain, and will certainly displease my brother when he returns home.”
    “Indeed,” said Adam, puffing Virginia tobacco smoke through his nostrils. He crossed his plump black velvet thighs. “Well, my conscience bids me say, miss - that I am still master here at Groton, that I understand my son quite as well as you do, and that no chit of sixteen has leave to censure her elders!”
    Lucy flushed crimson, Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled, but Martha, frightened as always by any sort of adult anger, let fall the piles of wool and ran to hide her face on her mother’s lap.
    Anne smoothed the silky brown head. What a fuss about nothing, she thought; surely it is the Will of God that we should all be happy, and knew at once what a foolish spineless thought that was. John, and Mr. Nicholson, the Groton rector, said that was not the Will of God at all. He wanted them to mortify the flesh, and earn salvation. If I were not so weary, Anne thought, I could worry more about my own and the babies’ souls. And the new one . . . dear God, don’t let it die - or me - when it is born . . .

    Adam held his revelry that night in honour of the King, and it was to be - by reason of a guest who came to Groton - an occasion which affected ail their lives. The old squire had sent his under-groom with invitations to several of the neighbouring big houses, and was particularly gratified by the unexpected acceptance of Lord and Lady deVere who were temporarily in residence at their country seat near Hadleigh and were kin to the Earl of Oxford. No one so exalted had ever honoured Groton Manor before. Even Mistress Winthrop was pleased when she heard of this, and made arrangements to have herself carried downstairs. Although Lord deVere was a worldly peer, and spent much time at court where it was well known that matters of strict decorum and religious reform were not as important as they should be, still he was a Baron, and it was impossible not to feel flattered by his graciousness. True, Adam was a generation removed from the Suffolk clothier who had become first squire of Groton Manor, yet Mistress Winthrop herself could claim no aristocratic tinge at all. She had been plain Anne Brown of Edwardstone, a yeoman’s daughter. She ordered her best dress of black brocaded velvet to be brought from its chest and pressed, and by six o’clock she was downstairs and installed in the Great Hall with her injured ankle propped on a footstool. She wore her four gold rings, and even carried a small painted fan that had some French writing on it, “U amour se trouve aux fleurs, dans la beauti de ses coeurs.”
    Anne, waiting as they all were for the first guests to arrive, watched her mother with amusement, knowing that when the deVeres came, the old lady would find opportunity to read out the motto on the fan. She was proud of her French, which she had learned from a Belgian lacemaker who had settled in the village of Edwardstone,
    “Now ye look like yourself again, daughter,” said Adam, coming up to Anne and pinching her cheek. “Like my pretty lass that was the fairest bride in Suffolk when she wed ...” He lowered his voice. “I didn’t give ye to a bad husband, did I,