I pray you, go not
near. Remember--_you_ were taken--alas! alas!--and _they_ were left!"
At this the Prioress laughed, gaily.
"But I was not taken decently, with pains in my bones and a-bed, dear
Antony. I was carried off by a bold, bad man--thy Knight of the Bloody
Vest."
"Oh, pray!" cried the old lay-sister. "I fear me it is an omen. The
angel Gabriel, Reverend Mother, sent to bear you from earth to heaven.
'The one shall be taken, and the other left.' Ah, if he had but flown
off with Mother Sub-Prioress!"
The Prioress laughed again. "Dear Antony, thy little bird took the
first pea he saw. Had there but been a crumb, or a morsel of cheese,
he would have left thee thy white pea. . . Hark how he sings his
little song of praise! . . . Is it not wonderful to call to mind how,
centuries ago, when white-robed Druids cut mistletoe from British oaks,
the robin redbreast hopped around, and sang; when, earlier still, men
were wild and savage, dwelling in holes and caves and huts of mud, when
churches and cloisters were unknown in this land and the one true God
undreamed of, robins mated and made their nests, the speckled thrushes
sang, 'Do it now--Do it now,' as they sought food for their young, the
blackbirds whistled, and the swallows flashed by on joyous wing. Aye,
and when Eve and Adam walked in Eden, amid strange beasts and gaily
plumaged birds, here--in these Isles--the robin redbreast sang, and all
our British birds busily built their nests and reared their young;
living their little joyous lives, as He Who made them taught them how
to do.
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