=Per´iwinkle= (_Mr._), one of the four guardians of Anne Lovely, the heiress. He is a silly, half-witted virtuoso, positive and surly; fond of everything antique and foreign; and wears clothes of the last century. Mr. Periwinkle dotes upon travellers, and believes more of Sir John Mandeville than he does of the Bible. Colonel Feignwell, to obtain his consent to his marriage with Mr. Periwinkle’s ward, disguised himself as an Egyptian, and passed himself off as a great traveller. His dress, he said, “belonged to the famous Claudius Ptolemēus, who lived in the year 135.” One of his curiosities was _poluflosboio_, “part of those waves which bore Cleopatra’s vessel, when she went to meet Antony.” Another was the _moros musphonon_, or girdle of invisibility. His trick, however, miscarried, and he then personated Pillage, the steward of Periwinkle’s father, and obtained Periwinkle’s signature to the marriage by a fluke.--Mrs. Centlivre, _A Bold Stroke For a Wife_ (1717). =Perker= (_Mr._), the lawyer employed for the defence in the famous suit of “Bardell _v._ Pickwick” for the breach of promise.--C. Dickens, _The Pickwick Papers_ (1836). =Perkin Warbeck=, an historic play or “chronicle history,” by John Ford (1635). =Perley Kelso.= A woman with “a weakness for an occupation, who suffers passions of superfluous life. At the Cape she rebelled because Providence did not create her a bluefisher. In Paris, she would make muslin flowers, and learn the _métier_ to-morrow.”--Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, _The Silent Partner_ (1871). =Pernelle= (_Madame_), mother of Orgon; a regular vixen, who interrupts every one, without waiting to hear what was to have been said to her.--Molière, _Tartuffe_ (1664). =Peronella=, a pretty country lass, who changes places with an old decrepit queen. Peronella rejoices for a time in the idolatry paid to her rank, but gladly resumes her beauty, youth, and rags.--_A Fairy Tale._ =Perrette and her Milk-Pail.= Perrette, carrying her milk-pail well-poised upon her head, began to speculate on its value. She would sell the milk and buy eggs; she would set the eggs and rear chickens; the chickens she would sell and buy a pig; this she would fatten and change for a cow and calf, and would it not be delightful to see the little calf skip and play? So saying, she gave a skip, let the milk-pail fall, and all the milk ran to waste. “Le lait tombe. Adieu, veau, vache, cochon, couvée,” and poor Perrette “va s’excuser à son mari, en grand danger d’etre battue.” Quel esprit ne bat la campagne? Qui ne fait château en Espagne? Picrochole [_q.v._], Pyrrhus, la laitière, enfin tous, Autant les sages que les fous.... Quelque accident fait-il que je rentre en moi-même; Je suis Gros-Jean comme devant. Lafontaine, _Fables_ (“La Laitière et le Po tau[TN-85] Lait,” 1668).