“Oh thank you. I shall never forget your kindness.”
Ailie went to Cecily and whispered: “See how friendly they are becoming.”
“What is it he gives her?” asked Cecily.
“It is a love letter,” said Ailie. “To think that Mercy should have a lover before me.”
“Love letter! You are wrong, Ailie. It is a recipe for some medicine, I'll swear.”
“Ah, my dear little Cecily, that may be. But there are many kinds of love letters.”
And Ailie pouted, for she said she liked it not that any of the girls should have a lover before she did.
Alice laughed at the two young people. “Master More, what strange daughters you have! They love Latin verse better than fine clothes, and exchange recipes when other youths and maidens exchange love tokens.”
“That may be,” said Thomas, “but with my family—and this fits every member of it—with my family, I am well pleased.”
“Tilly valley!” said Alice; but she herself was no less pleased.
THOMAS WROTE home regularly while he was away from them.
They must write to him for, he said, he missed them sorely, and it was only when he received their letters that he could be happy. He wanted to hear everything, no matter how trivial it seemed to them; if it concerned his home, that was enough to delight him. “There is no excuse for you girls,” he wrote. “Cannot girls always find something to chatter about? That is what I want you to do, my darlings. Take up your pens and chatter to your father.”
There was always a special compliment if Jack wrote anything. Poor Jack, now that he was growing up he was beginning to realize how difficult it was for a normal, healthy boy to compete with such brilliant sisters. Alice said it was God's rebuke on his father for having prated so much and so consistently about the equality of men's and women's brains when all the rest of the world opined that men were meant to be the scholars. Here are your brilliant daughters, perhaps God had said. And your son shall be a dullard.
Not that Jack was a dullard by any means; he was merely normal. He could not love lessons as he loved the outdoor life. Therefore his father wrote to his son very tenderly and cherished his efforts with the pen, encouraging him, understanding that all cannot love learning as some do.
He wrote enthusiastically to Margaret. He could not help it if writing to Margaret gave him pleasure which was greater than anything else he could enjoy during his sojourn abroad.
He was writing a book, which had long been in his mind, he told her. It consisted of imaginary conversations between himself and a man who had come from a strange land, which was called Utopia. They discussed the manners and customs of this land. The writing of this book was giving him great pleasure, and when he came home he would enjoy reading it to her.
“I showed one of your Latin essays to a very great man, Margaret. He is a great scholar, and you will be gratified when I tell you who he is. Reginald Pole. My dearest, he was astonished. He said that but for the fact that I assured him this was so, he would not have believed a girl—or anyone your age, boy or girl—could have done such work unaided. My dearest child, how can I explain to you my pride?”
He was a very proud man. He kept his children's writings with him, that he might read them through when he felt dejected and homesick; nor could he refrain from showing them to his friends and boasting a little. His pride and joy in his family was profound. He wrote to them:
My dearest children,
I hope that a letter to you all may find you in good health and that your father's good wishes may keep you so. In the meantime, while I make a long journey, drenched by soaking rain, and while my mount too frequently is bogged down in the mud, I compose this for you to give you pleasure. You will then gather an indication of your father's feelings for you—how much more than his own eyes he loves you; for the mud, the miserable weather and the necessity for driving a small horse through deep waters have not been able to distract my thoughts from you.…
Then he went on to tell them how he had always loved them and how he longed to be with them:
At the moment my love has increased so much that it seems to me that I used not to love you at all. Your characteristics tug at my heart, so bind me to you, that my being your father (the only reason for many a father's love) is hardly a reason at all for my love for you. Therefore, most dearly beloved children, continue to endear yourselves to your father, and by those same accomplishments, which make me think that I had not loved you before, make me think hereafter (for you can do it) that I do not love you now….
And so they waited, while the sweating sickness passed over Bucklersbury, for the return of the father whom they loved.
ONE DAY after his return when the family were gathered at the table, Thomas said to them: “I have a surprise for you all. There is to be a new addition to our family. I hope you will all make him welcome. I find him an interesting and charming person. I am sure you will too.”
“Is it a man?” asked Ailie, her eyes sparkling.
“It is, daughter.”
“Not a gray-bearded scholar this time, Father!”
“Half right and half wrong. A scholar but not a gray-bearded one. He is, I gather, some twenty years of age.”
“It is to be hoped he has not the finical manners of that Erasmus,” said Alice. “I want no more such foreigners in the house.”
“Nay, Alice, he is not a foreigner. He is an Englishman; and I doubt you will find him overfinical. He is of a very good family, I must tell you, and he comes to study the law with me.”
“Father,” cried Margaret, “how will you have time to help a young man with his studies, do your law work and serve the King and the Cardinal? You do too much. We shall never have you with us.”
“Do not scold me, Meg. I'll warrant you'll like Friend Roper. He is a serious young man, a little quiet, so he'll not disturb you overmuch. I think he will be ready to join our family circle.”
So William Roper came to the house—a young man of quiet manners and seeming meekness, but, Margaret noticed, with an obstinate line to his mouth. There was one thing about him that Margaret liked, and that was his devotion to her father. It was quite clear that the young man had decided to follow in Thomas's footsteps whenever possible.
John Clement, who had returned to the household of the Cardinal, came to the house whenever he could; and in a few months it became clear that Will Roper and John Clement looked upon The Barge in Bucklersbury as their home.
Margaret was thirteen when Will Roper came; he was twenty; yet in spite of the difference in their ages, Margaret felt as old as he was. As John Clement sought Mercy's company, Will Roper sought Margaret's; and this fact made Ailie pout a little. There was she, by far the prettiest of the three of them, and yet the two eligible young men at the house seemed to seek the friendship of Margaret and Mercy.
“Not,” she said to Cecily who was herself a little frivolous, “that we could call such as John Clement and Will Roper men; one is always sniffing herbs and cures, and the other always has his nose in his law books. Now that Father is at Court, perhaps he will bring home some real men … for you, Cecily, and for me. I doubt whether Margaret or Mercy would be interested.”