There was not a moment for lamenting.  All the mourning must be ready (if we cared to beat the Snowes) in eight-and-forty hours:  and, although it was Sunday night, mother now feeling sure of the thing, sat up with Lizzie, cutting patterns, and stitching things on brown paper, and snipping, and laying the fashions down, and requesting all opinions, yet when given, scorning them; insomuch that I grew weary even of tobacco (which had comforted me since Lorna), and prayed her to go on until the King should be alive again.

The thought of that so flurried her—­for she never yet could see a joke—­that she laid her scissors on the table and said, “The Lord forbid, John! after what I have cut up!”

“It would be just like him,” I answered, with a knowing smile:  “Mother, you had better stop.  Patterns may do very well; but don’t cut up any more good stuff.”

“Well, good lack, I am a fool!  Three tables pegged with needles!  The Lord in His mercy keep His Majesty, if ever He hath gotten him!”

By this device we went to bed; and not another stitch was struck until the troopers had office-tidings that the King was truly dead.  Hence the Snowes beat us by a day; and both old Betty and Lizzie laid the blame upon me, as usual.

Almost before we had put off the mourning, which as loyal subjects we kept for the King three months and a week; rumours of disturbances, of plottings, and of outbreak began to stir among us.  We heard of fighting in Scotland, and buying of ships on the continent, and of arms in Dorset and Somerset; and we kept our beacon in readiness to give signals of a landing; or rather the soldiers did.  For we, having trustworthy reports that the King had been to high mass himself in the Abbey of Westminster, making all the bishops go with him, and all the guards in London, and then tortured all the Protestants who dared to wait outside, moreover had received from the Pope a flower grown in the Virgin Mary’s garden, and warranted to last for ever, we of the moderate party, hearing all this and ten times as much, and having no love for this sour James, such as we had for the lively Charles, were ready to wait for what might happen, rather than care about stopping it.  Therefore we listened to rumours gladly, and shook our heads with gravity, and predicted, every man something, but scarce any two the same.  Nevertheless, in our part, things went on as usual, until the middle of June was nigh.  We ploughed the ground, and sowed the corn, and tended the cattle, and heeded every one his neighbour’s business, as carefully as heretofore; and the only thing that moved us much was that Annie had a baby.  This being a very fine child with blue eyes, and christened “John” in compliment to me, and with me for his godfather, it is natural to suppose that I thought a good deal about him; and when mother or Lizzie would ask me, all of a sudden, and treacherously, when the fire flared up at supper-time (for we always kept a little wood just alight in summer-time, and enough to make the pot boil), then when they would say to me, “John, what are you thinking of?  At a word, speak!” I would always answer, “Little John Faggus”; and so they made no more of me.