So grew my love and with it a deep reverence for her innate and virginal purity. It touched me deeply to note with what painful care she set herself to correct the grammatical errors and roughness of her speech; often she would fall to a sighful despondency because of her ignorance and at such times it was, I think, that I loved her best, vowing I would not change her for any proud lady that was or ever had been; whereof ensued such conversations as the following: DIANA. But when I am your wife we shall live in a fine house, I suppose. MYSELF. Would this distress you? DIANA. And meet grand folk, I suppose--earls and lords and--and that sort of thing? MYSELF. It is likely. DIANA. Shall we--must we have--servants? MYSELF. To be sure. DIANA (dismally). That's it! I shouldn't mind the earls s' much--it's the grand servants as would bother me. And then--O Peregrine--if ever I talked wrong or--acted wrong--not like a lady should--O Peregrine, would you be--ashamed o' me? MYSELF. No, no--I swear it! DIANA. I never wanted to be a lady--but I do now, Peregrine, for your sake. MYSELF. You are good and brave and noble, Diana, and this is better than all the fine-ladyishness in the world. DIANA (wistfully). Well, I wish I was a lady, all the same. MYSELF. You will soon learn, you who are so quick and clever. It was at this period that she began to purchase books and study them with passionate earnestness, more especially one, a thin, delicate volume that piqued my curiosity since, judging by her puckered brow and profound abstraction, this seemed to trouble and perplex her not a little. "Peregrine," she enquired suddenly one morning, as I leaned, somewhat short of breath, upon the long shaft of the sledge-hammer, "Peregrine, what's a moo?" "A moo?" I repeated, a little startled, "why, the sound a cow makes, I should think." "No, it can't be that," said Diana, shaking her head and frowning at the open page of that same slim book I have mentioned, "it can't have anything to do with a cow, Peregrine, because that's what a grand lady does when she enters a ballroom; it says she moos slightly--" "Lord, Ann!" exclaimed the Tinker. "What's she want to do that for? A moo's a beller, as Peregrine says, but who ever heard of a grand lady bellerin' in a ballroom or out--" "I said moo!" retorted Diana. "And it's in this book." "May I see?" I enquired. Obediently Diana rose and tendered me the volume, marking the paragraph with her finger, and at her command, I read aloud as follows. "'UPON ENTERING A BALLROOM. The head should be carried stately, the bust well-poised, the arms disposed gracefully. The gait should be swimming, the head graciously aslant and the lips slightly _moue_.'" "Well?" demanded Diana, glancing at Jeremy defiantly. "Now what's it mean, Peregrine?" "'_Moue_?" I explained gravely, "is a French word signifying 'to pout' the lips."