“Hurry, Chock, do my hair as he likes it!” urges Lady Peggy. “Lawk, Madam! I thought you swore just now you’d never set eyes on Sir Percy again?” “You thought! Bless you, Chock, never be a-wastin’ your time a-thinking where a woman’s concerned. When her heart steps up and lays hold the reins, the steed gallops to the goal; she’s always time to think after she’s acted.” “Yes, Madam,” concurs Chockey, with a mental reservation back of her mouthful of pins. “There, My Lady, Your Ladyship’s hair is lovely; your Levantine gown becomes you like a pheasant do its plumage, and your eyes is a-shinin’ with love and—” “Tut, girl! It’s anger, wrath, temper,—so!” Peggy marches up and down before the mirror, tossing her lovely head. “Thus attired, Chock, a lady can flout, deride, harass, and madden one of the opposite sex, as can she not do in cotton frock and fruit-stained apron. Give me my comfit box, I pray. Tell me how long Sir Percy now hath been cooling his heels in the drawing-room?” “But little lacking the hour, Madam.” “Good! I’d keep him there until Thursday, an I could. Now go tell him I’ll be with him presently.” Chockey went. Lady Peggy stood at the door ajar; she heard the impatient footsteps of her lover below, but yet she tarried, tapping her high red heel on the sill. “Lud!” cried she, “an I show no proper spirit, Percy’s uncle’ll have the right of it when he says of one he’s never seen yet, ‘She’s a-hunting your bank-notes, boy! She’s heiress to debts, Sir, and by my life, Sir! I’ll never father-in-law her, so long as I’m above the sod, Sir!’ Despicable old wretch! as if ’twere not Percy I adored, without a care if he have a farthing to his fortune, or a roof to his head!” And then Chockey, her palm warm with a sovereign, came with a rush. “My Lady!” cries she, “’f you could see Sir Percy! White as milk, tremblin’, shakin’, chatterin’, a-begging and a-praying as you’ll condescend to go to him inside of another hour!” “White, said you Chock?” The girl nods vehemently. “Shaking?” “Aye, Madam.” “Like to faint, think you?” “Like to die, My Lady!” Then Lady Peggy, laughing, humming such a gay snatch of a song, comes tripping down the stairs, pulling out her petticoats, stopping her lover’s outstretched arms of eagerness with such a splendid curtsy as any Court lady might have envied. Still laughing.—“Lud! Sir Percy! is’t you?” amazed. “Aye!” returns he, more amazed than she, and standing off with dropped arms. “Whom did you think it was?” “Another. My woman’s stupid, and when she described the gallant that she did, it matched a different sort of him than you, methinks. However, let’s be civil; the crops are good, the game likely to be, later; the King in health,—prithee have a chair.” And Peggy swept a second curtsy, motioning toward a seat.