SISTER ANNA'S PROBATION.

BY

CHAPTER I.

their glass handles, and the silver spoons, and, indeed, all the plate, were kept back till dinner time, as the whole neighborhood was abroad, and would be in and out of the ban

WEDDINGS were as gay affairs among the gentry three centuries ago, as they ever are now among the aristocracy. The marriage of Eleanor, eldest daughter of Squire Ather-quet-hall during the morning. stone, in a neighborhood well-known to the new Queen, Anne, and to all the Boleyn family, was like the weddings in country houses of that day. It was grander than the royal marriage which had recently become known, for the king and Anne Boleyn had been united in the most secret way; but the celebration lasted only one day, and did not fill the heads of a whole country, as it would have done if noble families had been concerned in it. The bishop who performed the ceremony was the bride's uncle; and her husband was a gentleman of good landed property-much richer than her father; and these were the nearest approaches to grandeur in the case.

While the serving-men were busy on the lawn, and the grooms in getting the horses ready for the passage to the church, and the cooks in the kitchen, constructing wonderful specimens of their art, the bride was in her bower, attended by her sisters-Anna, four years younger than herself, and now seventeen, and Little Bet, the youngest, and parents' darling. The other bridesmaids were not yet admitted to the apartment. This was to be the last, the very last, morning the sisters were ever to be alone together; for if it was Eleanor's marriage-day, it was the eve of Anna's virtual betrothal. She was the destined spouse of Christ; and she was the next morning to enter upon her noviciate in the convent in which she and Eleanor had been partly educated. Little Bet looked with so much awe upon both sisters and their respective engagements, that she had turned shy, and was glad to be told that she might go and play among the bridesmaids.

Eleanor's heart was very soft this morning. She said, in answer to Anna's bright sympathy,

"It is not all joy, Anna. I am not so happy as you. I am not so good; and how should I be so happy?"

The wedding-day was far on in October; but the season was so fine, that advantage was taken of the then modern custom of having the banquet in a garden banquet-hall -a long strip of dry lawn, enclosed with posts and rails, and covered in with green branches from the woods. The evergreens had been fastened the evening before, and by daybreak the brighter tints were inserted, in the form of red boughs of oak, yellow ash-sprays, and the light greens and crimsons of the broad vine leaves. Tressles and boards were laid throughout the whole length, "Do not call me good," replied Anna. and the family table-cloth was brought out." You cannot know whether I am good or The device wrought upon it was not the most suitable, as it had been manufactured for occasions of baptism, and the Salutation was the event figured in it; but it must serve for this, the first wedding in the family, as it would have required too much both of time and money to have a new one wrought with the Cana Marriage upon it. As it was not long enough to cover the whole board, a second was lent by the bishop, who had everything in good style; and the benches were placed, and the great almsdish, and most of the weightier articles of the banquet, before the guests began to arrive for the procession to church. The best knives with

not, in regard to my vocation; and it is a much more certain thing that you love Stephen Bridgman, and that Stephen loves you; and that when such lovers marry, with the good-will of all the world, they must be happy, if there be happiness in the world. Now, sit down before the mirror, and let me dress your head."

"Time enough for that when the other maidens come in. What I mean is, that I am so blessed in my marriage that I feel how unworthy I have always been of a higher lot. I could not devote myself to religion. You can; and you desire nothing else. You are secure of salvation; happy girl! and the

sacrifices you make for it cost you no should ever arise for aiding each other, they pain." would come together again as if this parting had been but for a day.

"Some are made to be wives, and some to be nuns," replied Anna; "and one may not be more wise or good than the other in being what she ought."

"True; but it is exactly there that I feel how low my mind is, compared with yours. Our Cousin Joan became a nun because from her childhood she wished it. We remember how she never would play at anything but being in the convent; and how all her romance was about being an abbess, or a saint, or something great in that way. It never was so with you. You never set your will on being a saint—”

"Nor an abbess," said Anna. "I would not be called Reverend Mother, and have her cares, for the world."

:

"Just so you have no passionate wishes, such as are to the nun what love is to the bride and this is why I reverence your cheerfulness even more than your obedience. Our parents and my uncle have brought you up to that vocation; and you have accepted it, without any passion, and without any regret. I honor you more than Joan."

"My divine affections are cold, Eleanor. I know what I ought to do. I hope to become more worthy when the world is shut out. I have no fears, because our uncle bids me have none; and he knows best: but there is nothing in me so worthy of praise as you think. I am clear in my mind, and satisfied in my heart; and the higher feelings will come, I doubt not. And now we must think only of you: " and she pointed to the hour-glass in which the sand had nearly run out.

Then the gay damsels outside the door were admitted, and the business of the toilet went on. Anna's elegant dress was for this day and one other only, as she would never again wear any but the religious livery, except on the occasion of assuming it. Her face was handsomer, some thought, than her sister's; yet she spent few minutes and fewer thoughts on herself; and it was merely for form's sake that she was sprinkled from the holy water cup attached to the mirror, to secure her from the perils of vanity. If the sprinkling had been omitted, there was no fear of her remaining long enough before the mirror to be in any danger of seeing the face of the Evil One where her own should be.

Both daughters appeared before the dame, their mother, on their way to the great hall; and there she accompanied them, to greet the guests, while the horses were brought up to the porch.

It was a gay procession; and the road was lined with the country people from far and near. Some took the opportunity of hawking their wares, before, and after the procession went by; and the squire was not too much engrossed with the care of his bride daughter, who rode beside him, to cast a keen glance into every group of strangers that he passed. He was a magistrate, and it concerned him to cause every ballad singer and every sturdy beggar to be looked after, that the neighborhood might not be either corrupted or pillaged. He remarked to his daughter, as other squires have since done, that common knaves were becoming more Before they opened the door to some who audacious than they had ever been before; were growing impatient, the sisters made and he fancied he saw, in the rear of the peace with each other for any act or word crowd, a seller of broadsheets who had ofwhich had in all their lives given pain. As fered, in the next parish, a song about conto the future, each would fain have offered juring bread and water at the mass and the comfort and refuge to the other in any of the font, and about the pope's butter and grease, turns of human life: but, as Eleanor ob- meaning the holy unction. He would have served, there would be no turns of fate for a watch kept in this parish against such Anna: no adversity could overtake her: her vendors of songs; and, indeed, against the divine espousals once completed, her earthly women and youngsters who were wont to lot was simply the beginning of the heavenly amuse themselves and their neighbors with hereafter. She herself might be driven by reading; for, as he remarked, if there was storms, or spoiled by too bright a sunshine: nobody to read the songs, there would be but Anna was secure in the calm peace of a none written, or at least, hawked about. devoted life, sheltered in the inviolate clois- In the churchyard, he therefore beckoned Still they promised that if occasion Jock, the constable, and desired him to have

ter.

his eye on a certain pedlar or ballad-man | veil," observed the carpenter's wife, who had
whom he described, and to show him the dropped a low curtsey to Anna and her cav-
way out of the parish before the revels alier as they passed. "He seems to look
should begin. The people might play what
games they liked on the green: but there
must be no reading, under any pretences:
nor any acting but approved old scenes;
nor singing but of songs which everybody
knew by heart. The bishop was to be pres-
ent that day, and all must be done to his
full satisfaction.

In church, the bishop looked altogether disposed to be satisfied with everybody. Eleanor was making a great match, in regard to fortune; and her father had been enabled to do his part towards it by the willingness of his second daughter to enter the cloister. The appropriation of eight hundred pounds to the convent secured Anna a good position there, and left the rest of the small fortune which would have been hers to be added to Eleanor's. The bishop looked with great benignity on both nieces, as they stood before the altar, the one full of earthly happiness, and the other, as he observed to his holiest chaplain, of heavenly serenity.

grave among the other gallants. They are
all full of jests with their ladies, the brides-
maids: but I watched him,-well as I know
him from a baby upwards: and not one
word has he said from turning yon corner
to this moment. He is thinking how the
rest may make love, each to his lady on the
pillion behind him; and how he must look
upon Mistress Anna as given away to the
Church."

"It is a great distinction, though," said
the curate as he went by, making his way
through the people to the gate of the manor-
house. "It will be told of him in his old age,
that he was permitted to be the maiden's
squire on the last day of her worldly life."

"Well, I don't know that," said the publican. "By the time the captain is as old as I am, there may be less notion of the honor of that sort of life."

"What sort of life?" asked the curate, sternly.

"Why, the life in a convent," replied the publican. "We don't all think of monks and nuns as they were once thought of. 'Tis said that some of them-and not far off where I am standing-are not so holy as they look."

The bridegroom was immensely admired as he claimed, after the service, to carry his wife home on his own horse. A handsome and easy pillion had been brought and fixed "You have been listening to some of the on; and as he mounted, and whispered to vile talk that is going about," said the curate. her over his shoulder, acclamations burst"The devil is abroad, we all know; and it from the crowd, as at something quite new and very charming.

"The sister is the prettier," observed the tradesman of the village, who had opened a shop, above a year since, for the sale of most of the articles required in village life. "The younger is the prettier to my eye."

"You will never said the publican, young ladies' maid.

see her so fine again," who had married the "This is the last day of her wearing a worldly dress. This time to-morrow, she will have put on the black and white: and in a year more, she will be the nun complete."

"The more's the pity, some of these gay gentlemen are thinking," observed the tradesman: "but to the poor it is much the same whether she be in a sacred house or a worldly one. I know, by their orders upon me, that she would give away all she had, without putting the veil over her head."

"I wonder what the captain thinks of that

is his envy of holiness that makes him lay
traps of lies for dunces like you to fall into.
But you had better have a care how you
speak evil of Christ's serving men and holy
maidens. The bishop hears of all such say-
ings; and he and the squire keep account
of them."

The innkeeper's wife put in a word for her
husband, who could not afford to lose the
countenance of the great men of the parish
and the Church. Her husband thought noth-
ing but good, she was sure, of the young la-
dies she had waited upon from childhood up:
and Anna especially had every one's good
word. It was because he thought so much
of her that he hoped the nuns were worthy
of having such an one admitted among them.
Some there were, no doubt, who were holy
damsels indeed; but all the world knew
what was said in these days of mischief made
by letting others in among them who would
not find themselves there for religious rea-

sons only. It was a safe place to put one or | tionary was as gay as the flowers. There another into who would not be in such good were not only gaudy fruits in sugar, but towcompany outside the convent. There was ers of Babel, with figures on all the stages; she who had been talked of with the young and castles with knights on the battlements, lord who had gone to the wars; and the and fair ladies looking out of the windows; other Well, she was not one who talked and in the centre a marvellous representascandal; and she hoped that things that had tion of a tournament, with a sward of frabeen said were not true; but all her hus- grant herbs, and an amphitheatre, with walls band meant was that he was jealous for such of pastry, and rows of sugarcake seats; and a young lady as Mistress Anna; and he brown and grey horses, with red and blue hoped she would spend her days in good standards, and knights in black armor; and company in this world, as it was certain she the king and queen in their crowns under a would in the other. scarlet canopy. There must have been a confectioner from London to make such a dish as this: and the inventor himself found a moment to look in from behind the hangings at the upper end to enjoy the admiration of the company. Meantime, the savory dishes were served, the lamprey pies, the rich stewed fish of many kinds, the sirloin, -one to every dozen guests,-the hauuch of venison here and there, the vegetables imported from Holland, soused in spicy sauces,

The curate declared that the wickedness of the world was enough to bring fire and brimstone upon it. There was not a place in England now where such sacrilege as speaking ill of the Church was not common: and the old faith and reverence were passing away, so that the dead might be glad that they were in their graves. It was sacrilege; and the bishop must know it; and he walked away in wrath.

The word "sacrilege" spread a great si--and the endless varieties of bread, from lence among the gossips: but in a little while they were whispering in pairs, telling what each had heard of the result of certain inquiries into the state of one or another religious establishment. The publican's wife got him home to the business of this busy day, reproving him on the way for his rashness in talking of matters which were no concern of his. He stopped her with a mysterious air, saying that if she knew what he did of what was in the wind, she would see that he had his reasons for learning what could be said on two sides of a thing.

"Learning!" said she. "Learn what you like. But it was telling, not learning, that you was venturing upon. If there are two sides about the Church, the more folly there is in idle gossip about either."

And so they turned in at their own door, and threw open their house to the custom of the day.

The banquet was the next ceremony at the manor-house. It was a fine sight when the company repaired to the booth, where the October sun, at this hour,-an hour before noon,-shone in among the green branches which covered in the long tables, glancing over the great silver salt-cellar, and the cups and spoons, and the bright pewter platters, and bringing out the tints of the flowers in the beaupots, all down the board. The confec

the delicate manchet to the brown loaf. The fruits and preserves were within view, under the shelter of the towers and castles of sugar. There were pears from France, as well as many kinds of apples from native orchards. There were late peaches; and dishes of medlars; and nuts from the Levant; and ginger from the Indies; and plums from France and Portugal; and preserved cherries from Germany, besides all the many-colored conserves which came from the still-room of the manor-house. Before these were touched, however, the pasties were brought in, and the brawn and boars' heads and game. The finest pasty was set before the bishop, to be by him consigned to the bridegroom to be carved. From a coffin of rich and substantial piecrust rose the brilliant head of a peacock, with its crest fully set; and at the other end, the coffin-lid was so slit as to allow the tail to spread as in life. Before some of the groomsmen other pasties were placed, some as large, but none so brilliant. The pheasants came next to the peacock in splendor; and the order degenerated down to the commonplace goose pie at the lower end of the board. Anna was of opinion that her cavalier's pasty was as graceful as any. From it a swan's head and neck issued at one end, and a tail of waving ostrich-feathers at the other. All conversation was sus

"I certainly will," replied the captain to the child. "And you will claim me," he added to Anna, as they ate off the same platter, according to the fashion of the time. He had throughout given her the delicate bits, and some few words between: but they had not spoken much, and were decidedly the quietest couple there. "You have not promised me that you will do as your little sister says."

"How can I ever

pended, the music stopped, and the jesters ear as he rose ; and his face was grave, and held their tongues when these phenomena showed a transient blush as he began to assumed their place, and the serving-men speak. He said little; but the affectionate took the knives from the bridegroom and his tone of his congratulations to his friend friends to give them a fresh whet behind the Stephen, and to the family he had entered, screen. One or two had gold-tipped whet-won the regard of all hearers. Anna looked stones of their own, which they used at ta- up at him with pleasure in her face; and litble; and then the bridegroom stood up be- tle Bet, who sat beside her mother, leaned hind the screen of the peacock's tail. over, and asked Anna to tell Captain The bishop had raised his courage by a Fletcher that she hoped he would come to joke; and he stood up with a smile upon his her rescue, whenever any wicked people face to make the speech of the day. He should try to rob and murder her; which offered his farewell to his bachelor friends, message Anna delivered as soon as the bequeathing to them the duties of the disen-health of the bridegroom and bride had been gaged knight, on behalf of all persons every- drunk, and the swan distributed to those where who needed chivalrous protection. who liked. He would henceforth have duties at home, and nearer interests to protect: but his sword, and his will, and voice, and all that he had would still be at the service of his neighbors, if they should be molested by high or low and the Church had no griefs which he was not ready to avenge: and the king had only to command his sword and his substance, to uphold his right and dignity against any interference of pope or emperor in the realm of England. If the bachelor gentry of the kingdom held themselves ready to start at any moment for war across the sea, the married men were bound to keep all right on their own lands, and see that the Throne and the Church were sustained at home. By the knife he held, and the princely dish he was about to distribute, he vowed that he and his household would discharge the duties of loyal subjects and good citizens. When he should have fulfilled his present office, the company would drink the health of the king and Church, and the prosperity of the realm. Then, after brandishing the knife before the eyes of the company, he plunged it into the pasty, and carved the dish with so much grace that Eleanor was thoroughly proud of her husband's fine breeding. The wine went round as the platters were filled, and the toast was drunk cheerily. Then there was a call for Captain Fletcher, the first groomsman after the bride's brother Hubert, who was too young, or too modest, to make a speech ; and Anna's cavalier went through the same feat with the coffined swan before him. His vow was different, as he was a bachelor; his air and his speech were different; but, as some there thought, equally good. No one had whispered a joke in his

"I!" replied Anna. need your help? Do you know-surely you must know where I am going to-morrow." Yes, I know," said he, gravely.

"Then you are answered. What can a champion find to do for a cloistered friend ? I shall have no dangers that you can deal with. There will be no changes, no perils, no needs, but spiritual ones."

"You do not know that." "You mean that you doubt my fulfilling my probation. We shall see."

"I was not thinking of that at the moment: though I might trust somewhat, too, to the possibility of your changing your mind."

"I shall not change my mind

"You cannot know that, either."

"You will not believe that I know my own intentions at all," said Anna, smiling. "But I have been brought up for the cloister. The convent is a second home to me. The life there is familiar to me; and I am sure it is the life for me. How can you doubt its being the calm refuge that I say? What is there of which so much can be said? unless of the grave? "

"Here we have no continuing city," said he, in a low voice.