Before they did, she and her sisters would walk out of the Nunnery and leave the King's Courts to judge of the matter.
Now the state of the Abbot was very like to that of a terrier dog which, being accustomed to worry and torment a certain ewe-sheep, comes upon the same after it has lambed and finds a new creature--one that, instead of running in affright, turns upon it and, with head and hood and all its weight of mutton, butts, and leaps, and tramples.

Then what chance has that dog against the terrible and unsuspected fury of the sheep, born, as it thought, for it to tear?
Then what can it do but run, panting and discomfited, to its kennel?
So it was with the Abbot at the onslaught of Mother Matilda in the defence of her lamb--Cicely.

With Emlyn he had been prepared to exchange bite for bite--but Mother Matilda! his own pet quarry.

It was too much.

He could only go away, cursing all women and their infinite variety, on which no man might build.