“It is sad, very sad, your Holiness—­no, that’s wrong; but never mind, it will be right before all’s done, and a good omen, I say, coming so sudden and chancy—­your Lordship, I mean—­not but what there’s lots of the sort about here, as is generally the case round a—­I mean everywhere.  Moreover, they generally grow up bad and ungrateful, as I know well from my own three—­not but what, of course, I was married fast enough.  Well, what I was going to say was, that when things is so, sometimes it is a true blessing if the little innocents should go off at the first, and so be spared the finger of shame and the sniff of scorn,” and she paused.

“Yes, Mistress Megges, or at least in such a case it is not for us to rail at the decree of Heaven—­provided, of course, that the infant has lived long enough to be baptized,” he added hastily.

“No, your Eminence, no.  That’s just what I said to that Smith girl last spring, when, being a heavy sleeper, I happened to overlie her brat and woke up to find it flat and blue.  When she saw it she took on, bellowing like a heifer that has lost its first calf, and I said to her, ’Mary, this isn’t me; it’s Heaven.  Mary, you should be very thankful, since my burden has rid you of your burden, and you can bury such a tiny one for next to nothing.  Mary, cry a little if you like, for that’s natural with the first, but don’t come here flying in the face of Heaven with your railings, and gates, and posts—­especially the rails, for Heaven hates ‘em.’”

“Ah!” asked the Abbot, with mild interest, “and pray what did Mary do then?”

“Do, the graceless wench?  Why, she said, ’Is it rails you’re talking of, you pig-smothering old sow?  Then here’s a rail for you,’ and she pulled the top bar off my own fence—­for we were talking by the door—­oak it was, and three by two—­and knocked me flat—­here’s the scar of it on my head—­singing out, ’Is that enough, or will you have the gate and the posts too?’ Oh!  If there’s one thing I hate, it is railing, ’specially if made of hard oak and held edgeways.”

So the wicked old hag babbled on, after her hideous fashion, while the Abbot stared at the ceiling.

“Enough of these sad stories of vice and violence.  Such mischances will happen, and of course you were not to blame.  Now, good Mistress Megges, will you undertake this case, which cannot be left to ignorant nuns?  Though times are hard here, since of late many losses have fallen on our house, your skill shall be well paid.”

The woman shuffled her big feet and stared at the floor, then looked up suddenly with a glance that seemed to bore to his heart like a bradawl, and asked—­

“And if perchance the blessed babe should fly to heaven through my fingers, as in my time I have known dozens of them do, should I still get that pay?”

“Then,” the Abbot answered, with a smile—­a somewhat sickly smile—­“then I think, mistress, you should have double pay, to console you for your sorrow and for any doubts that might be thrown upon your skill.”