Audrey fastened the horse against the time that Darden should remember to send for it, and then followed the ex-waiting-woman and the former queen of a company of strollers up a grassy path and through a little green door into a pleasant room, where grape leaves wreathed the windows and cast their shadows upon a sanded floor.  At one end of the room stood a great, rudely built cabinet, and before it a long table, strewn with an orderly litter of such slender articles of apparel as silk and tissue scarfs, gauze hoods, breast knots, silk stockings, and embroidered gloves.  Mistress Deborah must needs run and examine these at once, and Mistress Mary Stagg, wife of the lessee, manager, and principal actor of the Williamsburgh theatre, looked complacently over her shoulder.  The minister’s wife sighed again, this time with envy.

“What with the theatre, and the bowling green, and tea in your summer-house, and dancing lessons, and the sale of these fine things, you and Charles must turn a pretty penny!  The luck that some folk have! You were always fortunate, Mary.”

Mistress Stagg did not deny the imputation.  But she was a kindly soul, who had not forgotten the gift of my Lady Squander’s pink alamode.  The chocolate stain had not been so very large.

“I’ve laid by a pretty piece of sarcenet of which to make you a capuchin,” she said promptly.  “Now, here’s the wine.  Shan’t we go into the garden, and sip it there?  Peggy,” to the black girl holding a salver, “put the cake and wine on the table in the arbor; then sit here by the window, and call me if any come.  My dear Deborah, I doubt if I have so much as a ribbon left by the end of the week.  The town is that gay!  I says to Mirabell this morning, says I, ’Lord, my dear, it a’most puts me in mind of Bath!’ And Mirabell says—­But here’s the garden door.  Now, isn’t it cool and pleasant out here?  Audrey may gather us some grapes.  Yes, they’re very fine, full bunches; it has been a bounteous year.”

The grape arbor hugged the house, but beyond it was a pretty, shady, fancifully laid out garden, with shell-bordered walks, a grotto, a summer-house, and a gate opening into Nicholson Street.  Beyond the garden a glimpse was to be caught through the trees of a trim bowling green.  It had rained the night before, and a delightful, almost vernal freshness breathed in the air.  The bees made a great buzzing amongst the grapes, and the birds in the mulberry-trees sang as though it were nesting time.  Mistress Stagg and her old acquaintance sat at a table placed in the shadow of the vines, and sipped their wine, while Audrey obediently gathered clusters of the purple fruit, and thought the garden very fine, but oh, not like—­There could be no garden in the world so beautiful and so dear as that!  And she had not seen it for so long, so long a time.  She wondered if she would ever see it again.

When she brought the fruit to the table, Mistress Stagg made room for her kindly enough; and she sat and drank her wine and went to her world of dreams, while her companions bartered town and country gossip.  It has been said that the small white house adjoined a larger building.  A window in this structure, which had much the appearance of a barn, was now opened, with the result that a confused sound, as of several people speaking at once, made itself heard.  Suddenly the noise gave place to a single high-pitched voice:—­