The children were to be admitted to Matins, for
if any idea oozed out that this latter service had been held, no
great danger was likely to come of it. Dr. Eales arrived in the
evening, Steadfast meeting him to act as guide, and Patience set
before him of her best. A fowl, which she had been forced to broil
for want of other means of dressing it; bread baked in a tin with a
fire of leaves and small sticks heaped over it; roasted eggs,
excellent butter and milk. She apologised for not having dared to
fetch any ale for fear of exciting suspicion, but the doctor set her
quite at ease by his manifest enjoyment of her little feast,
declaring that he had not made so good a meal since Bristol was
taken.
Then he catechised the children. Little Ben could say the Lord's
Prayer, the Belief, and some of the shorter Commandments, and the
doctor patted his little round white cap, and gave him two Turkey
figs as a reward.
Jerusha, when she got over her desperate fright enough to speak above
a whisper, was quite perfect from her name down to "charity with all
men," but Emlyn stumbled horribly over even the first answers, and
utterly broke down in the Fourth Commandment; but she smiled up in
the doctor's face in her pretty way, and blushed as she said "The
chaplain at Blythedale had taught us so far, your reverence.
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