"I am glad when I think that now Roger will see France again, as a grown man. He will remember many things I have told him. I wish that I might have seen him ere he went away so suddenly. Wherever he is, he has good thoughts in his head; he always loved his Latin, and can even stumble through the orchard ground and smell the trodden thyme with old Theocritus. I wish I had been there at your parting feast. ’T was a glory to the house’s mistress, and that merchant prince, the good master of the river." "Peggy has another opinion of me. ’Go you an’ deck the tables, an it please you, child,’ she says, ’an’ leave me to give my orders;’ but we hold some grave consultations for all that," insisted Mary modestly. "She is very stern on feast days with us all, is Peggy." "Lenient in the main," urged Master Sullivan, smiling. "She found convoy for a basket of her best wares only yesterday, with a message that she had cooked too much for Portsmouth gentlemen, guests who failed in their visit. Margery and I feasted in high hall together. There was a grand bottle of claret." "My brother chose it himself from the cellar," said Mary, much pleased, but still there was a look of trouble in her eyes. "You will give him my thanks, and say that it made a young French gallant of me for a pleasant hour. The only fault I found was that I had not its giver to drink share and share with me. Margery, my wife, heard tales from me which had not vexed the air these fifty years, and, being as warm as a lady abbess with such good cheer, she fell asleep in the middle of the best tale, over her worsted knitting! ’Sure,’ she waked to tell me, ’if these be true, ’t was time you were snatched out of France like a brand from the burning, and got the likes o’ poor me to straighten ye!’" and the old man looked at Mary, with a twinkle in his eyes. "They said you danced all night with the little captain, and that he spoke his love on the terrace in the sight of more than one of the company," said the master gayly. "’T is another heart you ’ve broke, I suppose, and sent him sad away. Or was it his uniform that won ye?" They both laughed, but Mary blushed, and wished she were away herself. "I have no right to ask what passed between ye," he said then, with grave sweetness that won her back to him. "I find him a man of great power. He has the thoughts and manners of a gentleman, and now he goes to face his opportunity," added the old Irish rebel. "’Tis said everywhere that your great captain is an earl’s son," said Margery unexpectedly, from the fireside. But Master Sullivan slowly shook his head. The old wife was impatient of contradiction at the best of times, and now launched forth into an argument. He treated her, in these late days, as if she were a princess; but ’t was a trying moment to him now, and luckily the old volume of Horace fell from his lap to the floor.