But he felt a dart of sharp happiness at such an indelicacy. This was a wild adventure. A wilder was to follow, for, as he lifted her across the front wheel he was forced to observe not only her prunella slippers entire, but a flash of the white stocking above the ankle where the crossed thongs were knotted. He was dizzied by the swoop of her beauty. She came to earth and his arms in the billow of her huge silken skirt, and her vast “elephant” sleeves, with a swirl of ribbons everywhere. An incense came with the goddess stooping to the ground, and she leaned a moment along his body, the captive of his arms, and he thrust his face so deep into her hat that its brim knocked off his own tall beaver. He let it lie in the dust, though it was a deep-piled St. John of the latest bell. He kissed her full and fair, and his arms found her as soft, as spicy, and as lithe in her voluminous taffeta as a long bough of tulip blossoms smothered in leaves. But the sharp points of his collar, protruding above his stock like a pair of spear-heads, hurt her cheek and threatened to blind her, and she squealed. He loved to hear her squeal. A rude guffaw of unmannerly laughter brought him back to daylight and indignation, as he heard old farmer Albeson roar: “Wall, wall! I never seen two bodies with one head till now. Why, it’s Master Dave! and his female bride!” The farmer’s wife cackled at the wit of her spouse, and Patty giggled with well-bred reserve. She treated the old rustics with the manner she held toward the blacks who had been her father’s slaves when she was younger. But though the Albesons were quick to remind any presumptuous prigs that they were as good as royalty in the great and only republic, they found Patty’s tyranny as pretty as a baby’s. They led the way into the house. David’s black man Cuff took the horses to the stable, and Patty’s brown woman Teen carried the luggage up the steps and up the stairs to the long, lone room under the eaves, that grazed the four high tops of bedposts carved as if the mahogany had been twisted or braided. The first duty was to wash off the dust of the travel. When Patty lifted the scuttle hat from the clutter of her curls before the mirror, she screamed with dismay: “I’m blacker than Teen!” RoBards himself poured water into the bowl and boasted of its clarity. “Not much like the soup you get from your city cisterns, eh?” “It’s cold, though,” she murmured. She put him out of the room while she changed her dress to a simple, loose house-robe. She slipped out of the steel cuirass of her stays, and the soft sleeves drooped from her shoulders along her arms. There was a girl’s body bewitchingly hinted inside the twinkling wrinkles.