she seems fond of this wild runagate."

"A mad girl, a mad girl," said the little friar.

"How a mad girl?" said brother Michael. "Has she not beauty,
grace, wit, sense, discretion, dexterity, learning, and valour?"

"Learning!" exclaimed the little friar; "what has a woman to do
with learning? And valour! who ever heard a woman commended for valour?
Meekness and mildness, and softness, and gentleness, and tenderness,
and humility, and obedience to her husband, and faith in her confessor,
and domesticity, or, as learned doctors call it, the faculty
of stayathomeitiveness, and embroidery, and music, and pickling,
and preserving, and the whole complex and multiplex detail of
the noble science of dinner, as well in preparation for the table,
as in arrangement over it, and in distribution around it to knights,
and squires, and ghostly friars,--these are female virtues:
but valour--why who ever heard----?"

"She is the all in all," said brother Michael, "gentle as a ring-dove,
yet high-soaring as a falcon: humble below her deserving,
yet deserving beyond the estimate of panegyric: an exact economist
in all superfluity, yet a most bountiful dispenser in all liberality:
the chief regulator of her household, the fairest pillar of
her hall, and the sweetest blossom of her bower: having, in all
opposite proposings, sense to understand, judgment to weigh,
discretion to choose, firmness to undertake, diligence to conduct,
perseverance to accomplish, and resolution to maintain.
For obedience to her husband, that is not to be tried till she has one:
for faith in her confessor, she has as much as the law prescribes: