"Why, Humphrey, 'twas the first night of the Nevilles' coming, Romney did make a clean breast of his love for Peggy, and the next day we talked of it again. He told me all,--how he had asked her to marry him and got no answer; that is, none that suited him, for he swore she cared no more for him than for any gallant of St. Mary's save as he had befriended her brother; 'but, Mother,' he said, 'I spoke with her since she came to Romney and told her the matter was not to be opened for a year, that we were both too young, and meanwhile we were to be friends, and if she made any show of not being at ease with me, I would take myself off for the whole year, and that would be a great grief to you and my father.'" "Ah!" said her husband, "the boy has the blood of the Huntoons in him. 'Twas spoken like a man, and Peggy--what said she?" "She said nothing, only stretched out both hands and looked up at him in a way she has which would make a man in love with her that was cold before, and make her lover ready to live or die for another like it. Ever since they have been fast friends, though 'tis to thee rather than Romney she shows favor, and 'tis well I am a woman above jealousy." While they were talking Neville entered. "Is it not a pity, my good host, to be shut indoors when the sunshine lies on the river bank and the air is like mellow wine?" "Hast thou spent the morning in the open?" "Ay, Romney and I and Peggy have been sitting by the river bank. We made wreaths for her while she bound our wrists with withes and laughed to see us struggle with them. I did break mine full easily; but Romney could not for his life till Peggy did herself undo them." "Where did you leave the two?" asked Elizabeth. "They came up from the river with me, but turned in at the barn where the spinning-wheel stands. There! I ought not to have told, for Peggy was fain to surprise thee with a great skein of smooth flax." "She is more like to surprise me with a knotted skein, and a snarl on the spindle that will take a week to unwind. Never was there such a careless, heedless, captivating being." "Since the days of Elizabeth Romney," said Huntoon, who would listen to no word spoken in detraction of Peggy. His wife smiled and thrust out her chin at him. "I must go and try if it be yet too late to rescue the poor wheel," she said, and passed out at the door and down the path which led to the barn. At the entrance of the barn she paused and stood looking in at the picture which the doorway framed. Leaning against the rough wall stood Romney, his fingers idly sweeping the strings of a lute, while his eyes were fixed upon Peggy as she sat by the flax-wheel in the corner. Her little foot pressed the treadle, her round arms swayed this way and that with the moving skein, and her supple fingers hovered over distaff and spindle.