r two weeks, fought a duel in the Field of Forty
Footsteps, and lost and won at the Cocoa Tree, between the lighting and
snuffing of the candles, three thousand pounds.

Therefore it stood slightly in awe of the wit and manners and fine
feathers, curled newest fashion, of its sometime friends and neighbors,
and its welcome, if warm at heart, was stiff as cloth of gold with
ceremony. The May Queen tripped in her speech as she besought Mistress
Evelyn to take the flower-wreathed great chair standing proudly forth from
the humbler seats, and colored charmingly at the lady of fashion's smiling
shake of the head and few graceful words of homage. The young men slyly
noted the length of the Colonel's periwig and the quality of Mr. Hayward's
Mechlin, while their elders, suddenly lacking material for discourse, made
shift to take a deal of snuff. The Colonel took matters into his own
capable hands.

"Mr. Jaquelin, I wish that my tobacco at Westover may look as finely a
fortnight hence as does yours to-day! There promise to be more Frenchmen
in my fields than Germans at St. James. Mr. Gary, if I come to Denbigh
when the peaches are ripe, will you teach me to make persico? Mr. Allen, I
hear that you breed cocks as courageous as those of Tanagra. I shall
borrow from you for a fight that I mean to give. Ladies, for how much gold
will you sell the recipe for that balm of Mecca you must use? There are
dames at Court would come barefoot to Virginia for so dazzling a bloom.
Why do you patch only upon the Whig side of the face? Are you all of one
camp, and does not one of you grow a white rosebush against the 29th of
May? May it please your Majesty the May Queen, I shall watch the sports
from this seat upon your right hand. Egad, the miller quits himself as
though he were the moss-grown fellow of Sherwood Forest!"

The ice had thawed; and by the time the victorious miller had been pushed
forward to receive the smart cocked hat which was the Virginia rendition
of the crown of wild olive, it had quite melted. Conversation became
general, and food was found or made for laughter. When the twelve fiddlers
who succeeded the blacksmith and the miller came trooping upon the green,
they played, one by one, to perhaps as light-hearted a company as a May
Day ever shone upon. All their tunes were gay and lively ones, and the
younger men moved their feet to the music, while a Strephon at the lower
end of the lists seized upon a blooming Chloe, and t