Chambers Robert William - The Maid-At-Arms стр 8.

"I ask pardon," stammered Ruyven; "had there been impropriety in what that fool, Sir John, did I should not have spoke, but have acted long since, Cousin Ormond."

"I'm sure of it," I said, warmly. "Forgive me, Ruyven."

"Oh, la!" said Dorothy, her lips twitching to a smile, "Ruyven only said it to plague me. I hate that

baronet, and Ruyven knows it, and harps ever on a foolish drinking-bout where all fell to the table, even Walter Butler, and that slow adder Sir John among the first. And they do say," she added, with scorn, "that the baronet did find one of my old shoon and filled it to my healthdamn him!"

"Dorothy!" I broke in, "who in Heaven's name taught you such shameful oaths?"

"Oaths?" Her face burned scarlet. "Is it a shameful oath to say 'Damn him'?"

"It is a common oath men usenot gentlewomen," I said.

"Oh! I supposed it harmless. They all laugh when I say itfather and Guy Johnson and the rest; and they swear other oathswords I would not say if I couldbut I did not know there was harm in a good smart 'damn!'"

She leaned back, one slender hand playing with the stem of her glass; and the flush faded from her face like an afterglow from a serene horizon.

"I fear," she said, "you of the South wear a polish we lack."

"Best mirror your faults in it while you have the chance," said Harry, promptly.

"We lack polisheven Walter Butler and Guy Johnson sneer at us under father's nose," said Ruyven. "What the devil is it in us Varicks that set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another? Am I parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance? Does Harry wear bat's wings for ears? Are Dorothy's legs crooked, that they all stare?"

"It's your red head," observed Cecile. "The good folk think to see the noon-sun setting in the wood"

"Oh, tally! you always say that," snapped Ruyven.

Dorothy, leaning forward, looked at me with dreamy blue eyes that saw beyond me.

"We are doubtless a little mad, as they say," she mused. "Otherwise we seem to be like other folk. We have clothing befitting, when we choose to wear it; we were schooled in Albany; we are people of quality, like the other patroons; we lack nothing for servants or tenantswhat ails them all, to nudge and stare and grin when we pass?"

"Mr. Livingston says our deportment shocks all," murmured Cecile.

"The Schuylers will have none of us," added Harry, plaintively"and I admire them, too."

"Oh, they all conduct shamefully when I go to school in Albany," burst out Sammy; "and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me and refused my salute. But I think he will render me my bow next time."

"Do the quality not visit you here?" I asked Dorothy.

"Visit us? No, cousin. Who is to receive them? Our mother is dead."

Cecile said: "Once they did come, but Uncle Varick had that mistress of Sir John's to sup with them and they took offence."

"Mrs. Van Cortlandt said she was a painted hussy" began Harry.

"The Van Rensselaers left the house, vowing that Sir Lupus had used them shamefully," added Cecile; "and Sir Lupus said: 'Tush! tush! When the Van Rensselaers are too good for the Putnams of Tribes Hill I'll eat my spurs!' and then he laughed till he cried."

"They never came again; nobody of quality ever came; nobody ever comes," said Ruyven.

"Excepting the Johnsons and the Butlers," corrected Sammy.

"And then everybody geths tight; they were here lath night and Uncle Varick is sthill abed," said little Benny, innocently.

"Will you all hold your tongues?" cried Dorothy, fiercely. "Father said we were not to tell anybody that Sir John and the Ormond-Butlers visited us."

"Why not?" I asked.

Dorothy clasped both hands under her chin, rested her bare elbows on the table, and leaned close to me, whispering confidentially: "Because of the war with the Boston people. The country is overrun with rebelsrebel troops at Albany, rebel gunners at Stanwix, rebels at Edward and Hunter and Johnstown. A scout of ten men came here last week; they were harrying a war-party of Brant's Mohawks, and Stoner was with them, and that great ox in buckskin, Jack Mount. And do you know what he said to father? He said, 'For Heaven's sake, turn red or blue, Sir Lupus, for if you don't we'll hang you to a crab-apple and chance the color.' And father said, 'I'm no partisan King's man'; and Jack Mount said, 'You're the joker of the pack, are you?' And father said, 'I'm not in the shuffle, and you can bear me out, you rogue!' And then Jack Mount wagged his big forefinger at him and said, 'Sir Lupus, if you're but a joker, one or t'other side must discard you!' And they rode away, priming their rifles and laughing, and father swore and shook his cane at them."

In her eagerness her lips almost touched my ear, and her breath warmed my cheek.

"All that I saw and heard," she whispered, "and I know father told Walter Butler, for a scout came yesterday, saying that a scout from the Rangers and the Royal Greens had crossed the hills, and I saw some of Sir John's Scotch loons riding