And it was just when her ladyship was stamping her foot pettishly, and the lord looking on in a doleful state, that, i’faith, such happy sounds of singing stole through the window! Why, the voices must have belonged to creatures as happy as lords. No, no, no; a mistake, kind reader, a mistake. As happy as--as poor servants not knowing where their morrow’s bread lay. Blessed--blessed--blessed hope, which paints that same to-morrow so gaudily that we have not much grief for our rags and crusts of to-day. And the morrow is to-day, and the morrow yet again, and still we hope on, hope ever. Faith, I would sooner be Tom Tumbler at the next show, with the “hope” of getting on Drury Lane boards, than the richest and handsomest peer in England, if he has no aspirations whatever. These poor servants were going to the statute fair, to get hired, if they could; to hope for hiring if they could not; and, as they went on, they sang merry songs. Oh! the sudden thought struck her. There was not a poor servant wench but wished to be a lady; why should not a lady wish to be a servant wench? ’Tis but the law of reciprocity. The very thought made her more joyful, or rather, less dismal than she had been for some time. A moment more, as her natural good-temper came back, and she had decided. Yes, she would dress in that peasant masquerade dress of hers; and she would be--Martha; and Nancy should be--Nancy. And--and would not his lordship join them? Of course his lordship would. His lordship should be--John! His lordship used plainer language than he had ever before used; his lordship, in a word, declined flatly; but ah! love will lead self-satisfied old-young men the queerest of dances; so, it is but just old parties should go through their little hops and jigs, and puff and blow all the way through the pretty little pas. So let us just imagine Martha, Nancy, and John, making for the fair; Martha laughing as she has not laughed for years, Nancy playing a polite, impertinent second, and John doing his very best to be gay and happy. Poor fellow! CHAPTER II. Even in this enlightened hour, at statute fairs English girls stand in rows and exhibit their points--mental, menial, and physical, to as many farmer’s wives as have tongues and eyes. ’Tis not a happy mode of hiring servants, choosing them as you would sheep; but let us hope that a better time is coming. And, of course, in the dark middle age, statute fairs were held in England; hence, we naturally get to that fair for which those blythe singers were bound, and whom Lady Henrietta and her court of two followed. ’Twas the usual scene: stout farmers’ wives marching about in the superior manner, the girls looking about in rows of rosy cheeks and giggles, and scandal everywhere; for at statute fairs the way in which the maids run down their old mistresses, and the way in which the mistresses run down their old maids, can easily be imagined.