"Then," I replied, "methinks, sir, the fault should be rather in you than in her who doth commit them, for she may be ignorant, or else subject to some infirmity of temper; but to commend faults should be a very dangerous error."
"But will you hear," quoth he, "your faults as Mr. Roper recited them?"
"Yea, willingly," I answered, "and mend them also if I can."
"Oh, I pray you mend them not," he cried.
At which I laughed, and said he should be ashamed to give such wanton advice. And then he:
"Mr. Roper declares you have so much inability to conceal your thoughts that albeit your lips should be forcibly closed, your eyes would speak them so clearly that any one who listed should read them."
"Methinks," I said, willing to excuse myself like the lawyer in the gospel, "that should not be my fault, who made not mine own eyes."
"Then he also says, that you have so sharp an apprehension of wrongs done to others, that if you hear of an injustice committed, or some cruel treatment of any one, you are so moved and troubled, that he has known you on such occasions to shed tears, which do not flow with a like ease for your own griefs. Do you cry mercy to this accusation, Mistress Sherwood?"
"Indeed," I answered, "God knoweth I do, and my ghostly father also. For the strong passions of resentment touching the evil usage our Catholics do meet with work in me so mightfully, that I often am in doubt if I have sinned therein. And concerning mine own griefs, they have been but few as yet, so that 'tis little praise I deserve for not overmuch resentment in instances wherein, if others are afflicted, I have much ado to restrain wrath."
"Ah," he said, "methinks if you answer in so true and grave a manner my rude catechizing. Mistress Sherwood, I be not bold enough to continue the inventory of your faults."
"I pray you do," I answered; for I felt in my soul an unusual liking for his conversation, and the more so when, leaving off jesting, he said, "The last fault Mr. Roper did charge you with was lack of prudence in matters wherein prudence is most needed in these days."
"Alas!" I exclaimed; "for that also do I cry mercy; but indeed, Master Rookwood, there is in these days so much cowardice and time-serving which doth style itself prudence, that methinks it might sometimes happen that a right boldness should be called rashness."