“‘Black ribbons,’ Chock! ‘A ghost,’ Chock! ‘McTart,’ Chock! Lord ha’ mercy! What’s to become o’ me?” Peggy’s tears smart her eyes as she flings the goose-quill over to a cheese on the shelf, where it sticks, and one day surprises the Vicar at his supper. “Get out of my sight!” she flings after it. “I can’t write! Who can write out her heart and soul, when it’s devilish hard even to speak it. Oh! Would I were my brother for one fine half-hour!” cries Peggy, rising and stamping up and down the stone floor of the buttery. “An’ if you were, Madam?” asks Chockey meekly, “what then?” “I’d swear! Yea, would I! Such a lot of splendid oaths as’d ease my mind and let me hear from my own lips what a fool’s part I’d played with my own—my adored Percy! Could I but see him! as Kennaston says.” Peggy in her progress now upsets a pan of cream, and has genuine pleasure in splashing it about over her slippers as she speaks. “But I! What am I? A girl! swaddled in petticoats and fallals; tethered to an apron, and a besom, and a harpsichord, and a needle,—yet can I snap a rapier, fire a pistol, jump a ditch, land a fish, for my brother taught me. Still it’s girl! girl! sit by the fire and spin! dawdle! dally!” The cream now spots up as far as Peggy’s chin and flecks its dimple. “Stop-at-home, nor stir-abroad! Smile, ogle!” each word emphasized with heel and toe. “And—” Lady Peggy now flops back into her chair, breathless, “wait on man’s will and whims,—that, Chock, ’s what ’tis to be a woman.” “Aye, ’tis,” assents the waiting woman. “But yet, My Lady, if I dared make bold, there’s summat Your Ladyship might do, an My Lady, Your Ladyship’s mother, came back home again from her visit to your uncle in York.” “Out with it!” says Peggy hopelessly, folding up her attempted letter and tucking it in her reticule. “Mayhap you could persuade, by much weeping and praying, falling into swoons and such like, that Her Ladyship would take you up to London! Once there, Sir Percy couldn’t keep his distance from you.” Peggy looks at Chockey as if she were a vision sent from on high; then, quickly succeeding derision curls her lip. “My Lady mother take a squealing chit like me up to town! Never! She’d say my manners weren’t fit, or my figger, or my wardrobe. Lud! Chock! Bethink thee, lass, of my gowns in London town! and me no more acquainted with the ways yonder, than our Brindle is with the family pew!” Lady Peggy walked out into the paddock, rubbed the cream from her slippers on the turf; caressed the ponies; munched the sweet cake she had in her apron-pocket, felt the keen sweet air blow over her hot forehead, and saw, dancing ever before her mind’s eye, that insidious sweet suggestion of “going up to London.” How did one go up to London?