Part 62 (2/2)

Penelope's cheeks burned, and she fanned and fanned her with a turkey wing and laughed to see Nick caper and to hear the piteous squalling which was my way of singing.

But she complained that the dip-lights danced and that the floor behaved in strange fas.h.i.+on, running like ripples on Vlaie Water in a west wind.

She had sipped but one gla.s.s of Sir William's port, but I think it was a gla.s.s too much; for the wine made her so hot, so she vowed, that her body was all one ardent coal, and so presently she pulled the hair-pegs from her hair and let it down and shook it out in the firelight till it flashed like a golden scarf flung about her.

Her pannier basque of rose silk--gift of Claudia and made in France--she presently slipped out of, leaving her in her petticoat and folded like a Quakeress in her crossed foulard, and her white arms as bare as her neck.

Which innocently concerned her not a whit, nor had she any more thought of her throat's loveliness than she had of herself in her s.h.i.+ft that morning at Bowman's.

She sat cooling her face with the turkey-wing fan and watching Nick's contre-dancing--his own candle-cast shadow on the wall dancing vis-a-vis--and she laughed and laughed, a-fanning there, like a child delighted by the antics of two older brothers, while Nick whirled on moccasined feet in his mad career, and I fifed windily to time his gambolading.

Then we played country games, but she would not kiss us as forfeit, defending her lips and vowing that no man should ever again take that toll of her.

Which contented me, though I remonstrated; and I was glad that Nick should not cheapen her lips though it cost me the same privilege. For we played ”Swallow! Swallow!” and I guessed correctly how many apple pips she held in her hand when she sang:

”Who can count the swallow's eggs?

Try it, Master Nimble-legs!

Climb and find a swallow's nest, Count the eggs beneath her breast, Take an egg and leave the rest And kiss the maid you love the best!”

But it was her hand only we might kiss, and but one finger at that--the smallest--for, says she, ”John Drogue hath said it, and I am mistress of Summer House! What I choose to give--or forgive--is of my proper choice.... And I do not choose to be kissed by any man whether he wears silk puce or deer-skin s.h.i.+rt!”

But the devil prompted me to remember Steve Watts, and my countenance changed.

”Do you bar regimentals?” I asked, forcing a wry smile.

She knew what was in my mind, for jealousy grinned at her out of my every feature; and she came toward me and laid her light hand upon my arm.

”Or red coat or blue, my lord,” she said, her smile fading to a glimmer, ”men have had of me my last complaisance. Are you not content? You taught me, sir.”

”If he taught you that a kiss is folly, he taught you more folly than is in a thousand kisses!” cries Nick. ”Why,” said he, turning on me, ”you pitiful, sober-faced, broad-brimmed spoil-sport!” says he, ”what are lips made for, you meddlesome a.s.s, and be d.a.m.ned to you!”

Instantly we were in clinch like two bears; and we wrestled and strained and swayed there, panting and nigh stifled with our laughter, till we fell with a crash that shook the house and set the bottles clinking; and there thrashed like a pair o' pups till I got his shoulders flat.

But it was nothing--he being the younger--and he leaped up and fell to treading an Oneida battle-dance, while Penelope and I did beat upon the table, singing:

”Ha-wa-sa-say!

Hah!

Ha-wa-sa-say--”

till the door opened and there stands my Saguenay, bleary-eyed, sleep-muddled, but his benumbed brain responsive to the thumping cadence of the old scalp-song.

But I pushed him down stairs ere he had sniffed a lung-full of our punch, having no mind to face a drink-mad Indian that night or any other.

<script>