Hetty drew a long breath.  “Perhaps,” she said drearily, “Charles will clothe us when he gets this money.  Perhaps he will even find us wooers in place of those to whom papa has shown the door.”

“I am not sure your father will allow Charles to accept,” said Mrs. Wesley gently; “though I may persuade him to let the lad decide for himself when he comes of age.  Until then the offer stands open.”

“I sometimes wonder,” Emilia mused, “if our father be not staring mad.”

“Hush, child!  That is neither for you to say nor for me to hear.  You know it has been almost a vow with him to dedicate your three brothers to God’s service.”

“Charles might inherit Dangan Castle and serve God too.  There is no law that an Irish squire must spend all his time cock-fighting.”

“These vows!” murmured Hetty, flinging herself back in her favourite attitude and nursing her knee.  “If folks will not obey Christ’s command and swear not at all, they might at least choose a vow which only hurts themselves.  Now, papa”—­Hetty shot a glance at her mother, who felt it, even in the dusk, and bent her eyes on the smouldering fire.  The girl had heard (for it was kitchen gossip) that Mr. Wesley had once quarrelled with his wife over politics, and left Epworth rectory vowing never to return to her until she acknowledged William III. for her rightful king; nor indeed had returned until William’s death made the vow idle and released him.  “Now, papa”—­after a pause—­“has an unfortunate habit, like Jephthah, of swearing to another’s hurt.  For instance, since Sukey married Dick Ellison, he seems to have vowed that none of us shall have a lover; and, so, dear mother, you might have found us just now, like six daughters of Jephthah, bewailing our fates upon a hill.”

“He has no fault to find with my John Lambert,” put in Nancy.

Hetty did not heed.  “I have no patience with these swearers.  A man, or a woman for that matter, should have the courage to outbrave an oath when it hurts the innocent.  Did God require the blood of Jephthah’s daughter? or of the sons of Rizpah?  Think, mother, if this fire were lit in the fields here, and you sitting by it to scare the beasts from your three sons!  I cannot like that David.  Saul, now, was a man and a king, every inch of him, even in his dark hours.  David had no breeding—­a pretty, florid man, with his curls and pink cheeks; one moment dancing and singing, and the next weeping on his bed.  Some women like that kind of man:  but his complexion wears off.  In the end he grows nasty, and from the first he is disgustingly underbred.”

“Hetty!”

“I cannot help it, mother.  Had I been Michal, and Saul’s daughter, and had seen that man capering before the ark, I should have scorned him as she did.”

And Hetty stood up and strode away into the darkness.

In the darkness, almost an hour later, Molly found her by the edge of a dyke.  She had a handkerchief twisted between her fingers, and kept wringing it as she paced to and fro.  Why had she given way to passion?  Why, on this night of all nights, had she saddened her mother?  And why by an outburst against David, of all people in the world?