“Your mistress be hanged, Sir! What know you of love to sit in a tub and make verses to her?” “I know enough of’t,” sighs the host, “to have been in like case with yourself any time this twelve-month! and ’tis a monstrous thing for you to thus impeach me, when ’tis you whom My Lady Diana favors rather than myself.” “Lady Diana be damned!” cries Percy rising. “She’s a coquette, Sir, and at bottom adores you, as does the fish the bait the while she plays and sidles ’round it, being sure in th’ end she’ll swallow it, hook and all.” “Very fine, i’ faith, yet while I sigh, you’re the one she smiles upon. Oh, Percy! Had I but a fortune! Could I but make my name in letters! Then perchance I’d stand my chance; but as ’tis,”—Peg’s twin fetches a sigh that sends the water splashing about the wine-stained floor. “As ’tis, Sir, counsel me, an you love me. Shall I hie me to Kennaston and wait upon your sister?” “Write her a letter of fire and sword, and blood and famine; stuff it full of oaths, protests, suicides, murders, as is a Christmas pudding of plums! There’s quill, ink and paper to your hand.” “I’ll do it and send it by Grigson on my fastest horse this day. I should have the answer before Friday?” “Aye, you should,” allows the host with an evident reservation. “Now, for God’s sake, Sir, stop cackling and let me finish my ode.” Which he did a-sitting in his bath, while Grigson dressed his wig. The toilet, and the letter, and the poem, were all three finished at once, and, without more ado, Sir Percy dispatched his man with the missive to Lady Peggy. “Come not back until you deliver it in person,” quoth the lover; “an you show yourself minus an answer, I’ll ship you to the Colonies by the next packet.”