hop on the
washing-green, under her mulberry-tree. It commenced at four o'clock in
the afternoon, and ended with dusk and the bats, and a gipsy fire, and
roasting groats and potatoes in the hot ashes, in imitation of the
freakish oyster supper which Clary had attended in town.

Clary took care to have her six couples well assorted, and not to be
severed till the merry-making was over; she did not mind uniting herself
to Master Sam Winnington, and Dulcie to Master Will Locke--mind! the
arrangement was a courteous compliment to the chief guests, and it gave
continual point to the entertainment. The company took a hilarious
pleasure in associating the four two-and-two, and commented openly on
the distribution: "Mistress Clary is mighty condescending to this
jackanapes." "Mistress Dulcie and t'other form a genteel pair."

To be sure the two young men heard the remarks, which they might have
taken as broad hints, and the girls heard them too, uttered as they were
without disguise; but so healthy were our ancestors, that nobody was put
out--not even soft, mooning Will Locke. Nothing came of it that
evening, unless a way Dulcie had of pressing her red lips together,
throwing back her little brown head, shaking out the powder from her
curls, and shaking down the curls themselves, with a gleeful laugh,
which appeared to turn her own "bridling" into derision; and a high
assertion of Clary's that she was determined never to wed a man beneath
the rank of a county member or a peer. Now, really, after Clary had
danced fifteen dances, and was about to dance other five, without
stopping, with a portrait painter, of her own free will, this was
drawing a longish and very unnecessary bow. But then Sam Winnington did
not take it amiss or contradict her. He said she was right, and he had
no doubt she would keep her word, and there was a quick, half-comic,
half-serious gleam from the depths of his grey eyes which made Clarissa
Gage look more bashful and lovelier than any man had ever yet beheld
her. Pity the member or the peer could not have been that man!

Imagine the party after Mistress Cambridge had provided them with some
of her favourite chickens, and more substantial Dutch beef, with wet
fruit and dry, cold Rhenish and sugar, and mulled wine against the dew
and damp feet, collecting merrily round the smoky fire, with little jets
of flame shooting up and flashing out on the six couples! Sam Winnington
in his silk stockings and point