rial
water, or water of Bettony, against she grow old; she can be
dairy-wise, cellar-wise, laundry-wise--oh, there are a thousand
thousand things she can do if she want to do them, but the plague of
it is, since I have burned powder, these decent drudgeries no longer
divert me."

She gave a little sigh as she ended her enumeration of a housewife's
tasks, and then banished the sigh with a smile. Evander found himself
thinking that a man might count himself happy for whom this lady
should sigh so at parting and smile so in welcome. But what he said
was:

"Against your next distillation I can give you a very praisable
recipe for a cordial. It is a Swedish fancy and much favored by the
ladies of the North."

Brilliana looked him full in the face and laughed very merrily, and
he felt his cheeks redden at her gaze and her mirth.

"Was there ever such a man-marvel?" she asked. "All my people praise
you for some different accomplishment. A horseman, a gardener, the
best at fence, the best, too, with a cudgel--"

"Ah, madam," Evander interrupted, apologetically, "pray how has that
come to your ears?"

"Never mind how it came," Brilliana answered, "so that it has come
and that I owe you no ill-will for teaching a foolish gentleman a
lesson. But you can shoot, it seems, and play games, and are apt in
out-door arts and wise in out-of-doors wisdom--for all the world like
a country gentleman."

"Madam, I am, as I hope, a gentleman, and as for the country
knowledge, I have lived its life in many lands and learned something
by the way."

"And now," Brilliana bantered on, "you boast some science of the
still-room, and Mistress Satchell speaks of a Spanish manner of
grilling capons. Are you, perhaps, a herald as well as a master cook,
and do you know something of the gentle and joyous craft of the
huntsman?"

Evander took her in her humor and bandied back the ball of
qualification.

"I can prick a coat indifferently well," he responded, solemnly, "and
if such trifles delight you, I can blaze arms by the days of the week
or the ages of man or the flowers of the field, though I hold that a
true herald will never stray beyond colors."

Brilliana nodded her head with an air of profound approval. "Better
and better," she murmured. Evander went on with his catalogue of
self-compliment.

"And as for my woodcraft, I can name you all the names of a male
deer, from hind calf, year by year, through brocket and spayed, and
stagga