“She’s too tall!” cried the sometime waiting woman angrily. “As for that great stain upon the silk, the wine made it when you threw your tankard at me, last Sunday but one.” “That manteau pins her arms to her sides,” interrupted the minister calmly, “and the lace is dirty. You’ve hidden all her hair under that mazarine, and too many patches become not a brown skin. Turn around, child!” While Audrey slowly revolved, the guardian of her fortunes, leaning back in his chair, bent his bushy brows and gazed, not at the circling figure in its tawdry apparel, but into the distance. When she stood still and looked at him with a half-angry, half-frightened face, he brought his bleared eyes to bear upon her, studied her for a minute, then motioned to his wife. “She must take off this paltry finery, Deborah,” he announced. “I’ll have none of it. Go, child, and don your Cinderella gown.” “What does it all mean?” cried Audrey, with heaving bosom. “Why did she put these things upon me, and why will she tell me nothing? If Hugon has hand in it”-- The minister made a gesture of contempt. “Hugon! Hugon, half Monacan and half Frenchman, is bartering skins with a Quaker. Begone, child, and when you are transformed return to us.” When the door had closed he turned upon his wife. “The girl has been cared for,” he said. “She has been fed,--if not with cates and dainties, then with bread and meat; she has been clothed,--if not in silk and lace, then in good blue linen and penistone. She is young and of the springtime, hath more learning than had many a princess of old times, is innocent and good to look at. Thou and the rest of thy sex are fools, Deborah, but wise men died not with Solomon. It matters not about her dress.” Rising, he went to a shelf of battered, dog-eared books, and taking down an armful proceeded to strew the volumes upon the table. The red blooms of the columbine being in the way, he took up the bunch and tossed it out of the window. With the light thud of the mass upon the ground eyes of husband and wife met. “Hugon would marry the girl,” said the latter, twisting the hem of her apron with restless fingers.