The White Ladies of Worcester | Page 3

purgatory; Mother
Sub-Prioress, rolling into purgatory, remained there; while the pale and
speckled pea went straight to hell!
When these were safely landed, Mary Antony rubbed her hands and,
chuckling gleefully, finished the game at gay hap-hazard, it being of
less importance where the rest of the holy Ladies chanced to go.
CHAPTER II
SISTER MARY ANTONY DISCOURSES
As Mary Antony shuffled slowly from the shadow into the sunshine, a
gay little flutter of wings preceded her, and a robin perched upon the
parapet behind the stone seat upon which it was the lay-sister's custom
to await the sound of the turning of the key in the lock of the heavy
door beneath the cloisters.

"Thou good-for-nothing imp!" exclaimed Mary Antony, her old face
crinkling with delight. "Thou little vain man, in thy red jerkin! Beshrew
thine impudence, intruding into a place where women alone do dwell,
and no male thing may enter. I would have thee take warning by the
fate of the baker's boy, who dared to climb into a tree, so that he might
peep over the wall and spy upon the holy Ladies in their garden.
Boasting afterward of that which he had done, and making merry over
that which he pretended to have seen, our great Lord Bishop heard of it,
and sent and took that baker's boy, and though he cried for mercy,
swearing the whole tale was an empty boast, they put out his bold eyes
with heated tongs, and hanged him from the very branches he had
climbed. They'd do the like to thee, thou little vain man, if Mary
Antony reported on thy ways. Wouldst like to hang, in thy red
doublet?"
The robin had heard this warning tale many times already, told by old
Mary Antony with infinite variety.
Sometimes the tongue of the baker's boy was cut out at the roots;
sometimes he lost his ears, or again, he was tied to a cart-tail, and
flogged through the Tything. Often he became a pieman, and once he
was a turnspit in the household of the Lord Bishop himself. But,
whatever the preliminaries, and whether baker, pieman, or turnspit, his
final catastrophe was always the same: he was hanged from a bough of
the very tree into which, impious and greatly daring, he had climbed.
This was an ancient tale. All who might vouch for it, saving the old
lay-sister, had passed away; and, of late, Mary Antony had been strictly
forbidden by the Reverend Mother, to tell it to new-comers, or to speak
of it to any of the nuns.
So, daily, she told it to the robin; and he, being neither baker's lad,
pieman, nor turnspit, and having a conscience void of offence, would
listen, wholly unafraid; then, hopping nearer to Mary Antony, would
look up at her, eager inquiry in his bright eyes.
On this particular afternoon he flew up into the very tree climbed by the
prying and ill-fated baker's lad, settled on a bough which branched out

over the Convent wall, and poured forth a gay trill of song.
"Ha, thou little vain man, in thy brown and red suit!" chuckled Mary
Antony, leaning her gnarled hands on the stone parapet, as she stood
framed in one of the cloister arches overlooking the garden. "Is that thy
little 'grace before meat'? But, I pray thee, Sir Robin, who said there
was cheese in my wallet? Nay, is there like to be cheese in a wallet
already containing five-and-twenty holy Ladies on their way back from
Vespers? Out upon thee for a most irreverent little glutton! I fear me
thou hast not only a high look, thou hast also a proud stomach; just the
reverse of the great French Cardinal who came, with much pomp, to
visit us at Easter time. He had a proud look and a-- Come down again,
thou little naughty man, and I will tell thee what the Lord Cardinal had
under his crimson sash. 'Tis not a thing to shout to the tree-tops. I might
have to recite ten Paternosters, if I let thee tempt me so to do. For
whispering it in thine ear, I should but say one; for having remarked it,
none at all. Facts are facts; and, even in the case of so weighty a fact,
the responsibility rests not upon the beholder."
Mary Antony leaned over the parapet, looking upward. The afternoon
sunlight fell full upon the russet parchment of her kind old face,
shewing the web of wrinkles spun by ninety years of the gently turning
wheel of time.
But the robin, perched upon the bough, trilled and sang, unmoved. He
was weary of tales of bakers and piemen. He was not at all curious as to
what had been beneath the French Cardinal's crimson sash. He