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In comparison, Kate, poor maid, had been no trouble at all. No one could regard the recusancy of a spinster female so seriously as the same offence in a male or even in a married woman. Here again his great Protestant relations had been able to help him, and he knew that as long as he kept his daughter in bounds he had not much to fear. His chief trouble was that no man would marry her—and next to that, that she would talk theology.

She was talking it at this moment to Robert Douce, talking it with her mouth full of pottage, breaking into the tale he loved to tell whenever there was any complaint of harshness against Romanists—of how he had fled from Paris the day after the massacre, with a white kerchief tied round his arm and on that same arm a basket containing the infant Maria disguised with lettuces . . . Catherine had heard that story many times before and always capped it with tales of landless Papists fleeing to Italy and France. When he went on to tell of the kennels of Paris running with Huguenot blood, she would be sure to have a massacre of Catholics to match it with . . . But they were far too much the children of their time to be content with mere controversial anecdotes; from the concrete they passed on to the abstract, from history to theology—now they would be at it for hours . . . and Squire Alard hated theology—he wished it were not so much the fashion. He was relieved when a growing sound in the hall swelled suddenly into a racket.