One day he met her in one of her short rambles about the wood near the house. Her eyes were on the ground, and her face was so sad that it seemed to touch his heart. He went toward her, and she started from her painful reverie and looked as if she would fly.
"Cora, it is I, are you afraid of me?" he asked.
"It is because of the good pastor's hatred of me. You were not at Church last Lord's day?"
Her sad eyes seemed to swim in tears, and Charles entreated her to tell him what Mr. Parris had said of her. Without answering his question, she asked:
"What do you think of Goody Nurse and her sisters, Goody Cloyse and Goody Easty?"
"They are very excellent women," Charles answered, "I would that we had more like them."
"Is it wrong for a young maid such as I to keep their company?"
Charles saw that Cora had something to tell, and he begged her to come to a large moss-covered log, on which they seated themselves, and then he asked:
"On last Lord's day he did upbraid us as the emissaries of the Devil, and Goody Nurse avowed if the minister did not cease to upbraid her in church, she would absent herself."
"That would be a violation of law. All are compelled to attend worship on Lord's day."
She was silent for several moments and then remarked:
"Can a law compel one to go where she is maligned and all the calumnies hate can invent heaped upon her head?"
"By the laws of the colony, all must attend church on Lord's day."
The laws of the Puritans were exacting, and ministers of the character of Mr. Parris took advantage of them.
"What did Mr. Parris say of you on last Lord's day, Cora?"
"I cannot recall all that he said. Even his text I have forgotten, for, as he was announcing it, Abigail Williams was seized with a grievous fit, and did cry out that Goody Nurse was pinching her. When she became quiet, and the pastor again announced his text, Abigail interrupted him with: 'It is not a doctrinal text, and it is too long.' He said that when the children of God went to worship, Satan came also. Then he declared that the Devil was in the church at that moment, and he looked at Goody Nurse and me, who sat near each other in the church. 'Do any of you doubt that the imps of darkness are in your presence? Behold how they associate the one with the other. Those who afflict and persecute the children of the righteous, and the unholy offspring of a player!' He grew in a towering passion and cried out so against me, that all eyes were turned upon me, and I bowed my head. No sooner had I done so, than he called on all to witness how Satan rebuked dared not show his face in the house of God. If I but looked on him to deny his charges he called it the brazen impudence of a child of darkness. All through his sermon, I sat listening to reproof for what I cannot help, or the frequent allusions to the familiar spirits of Goody Nurse."