I had a thimbleful of liqueur from his hand by and by, which made me think of the duck-stone. I was the little queen of the evening, and a delight to my father and all. “Faith!” said a merry Irish _rapparee_, a bit of a courtier captain, “man has been vainly trying to fit woman into the moral scheme ever since she made herself out of his ninth rib, and the fashions out of a fig-leaf; and here, in the eighteenth century Anno Domini, is the result.” I was carried on to the Steine presently by my father, my little brain whirling. The whole of the Castle Tavern, and every house and shop adjacent, were illuminated; and the lights and crowds of people quite intoxicated me. There were sports enacting on all sides, and I screamed with laughter to see a jingling match, played for a laced coat and hat, in which the jingler, hung with bells, dodged and eluded and dropped between the legs of the blindfolded who sought to capture him. Then there was a foot-race, run by young women for a Holland smock; and I jeered at their self-conscious antics with all my little might, as they went giggling into place, coy and hobbledehoy, and pushed and quarrelled secretly, and stopped the starter to do up their greasy tresses, and then, all but the winner, snivelled over the result, pronouncing it unfair. Presently I was taken to see an ox roasted whole; and it was here, while we were looking on at the lurid tumult, occurred a rencontre which was to alter the whole current of my life. A fat, drunken sweep in his war-paint jostled my father, who, himself in the fury of wine, turned and felled the beast to the ground. We were isolated from our friends at the moment, and a ring was immediately formed, and the sweep called upon to stand up and pay his interest like a man. He rose, nothing loth, it seemed, and faced my father, who was forced to engage. “My little ’orse and cart to a red-un that I whop ye!” cried the sweep. “Done!” answered my father, and they fell to. I was sure of the result, and stood by quite self-possessed and eager while they fought. A round or two settled it, and there sat the sweep, unable to rise again, with a white tooth dropped on his coat-front. When my father came away, I clung to him and kissed him in ecstasy. He was quite cool, and only a little breathed; and when, for the honour of sport, he had settled for the sweep’s trap to be driven round to his door in the morning, intending to put it up to auction, he shouldered me laughing, and carried me away amidst cheers. It was near midnight by then, and, happening upon a royal servant, he gave me into the man’s charge, and, in spite of my remonstrances, bade him convey me home. I sulked all the way, and was in no mood, after my excitement, to sympathise with my mother’s agitated reception of her truant. She had been near distracted all these hours, thinking me drowned or kidnapped, and could not control a gust of temper upon hearing how I had been employed.