“These Winscombes,” Howat interrupted, “what about them?  The Forsythes are a common occurrence.”

“David’s been gone more than three years,” she replied.  “And you should hear him talk; he’s got a coat with wired tails in his box he’s dying to wear, but is afraid of his father.  Oh, the Winscombes!  Well, he’s rather sweet, sixty or sixty-five years old; very straight up the back, and wears the loveliest wigs.  His servant fixes them on a stand—­he turns the curls about little rolls of clay, ties them with paper, and then bakes it in the oven like a pudding.  The servant is an Italian with a long duck’s bill of a nose and quick little black eyes.  He makes our negro women giggle like anything.  It’s evident he is fearfully impertinent.  And, what do you think?—­he hooks Mrs. Winscombe into her stays!  Mother says that that isn’t anything, really; Mrs. Winscombe is a lady of the court, and the most extraordinary happenings go on there.  You see, mother knows a lot about her family, and it’s very good; she’s part Polish and part English, and her name’s Ludowika.  She’s ages younger than her husband.

“Myrtle doesn’t like her,—­” she stopped midway in her torrent of information.  “I came in to talk to you about Myrtle,” she went on in a different voice; “that is, partly about Myrtle, but more of myself and of—­”

“How long are the others going to stay?” he cut in heedlessly.

“I don’t know,” she again repressed her own desire; “perhaps they will have to go back to Annapolis—­don’t ask me why—­but they hope to sail from Philadelphia in a week or so.  She has marvellous clothes, and I asked her if she would send me some babies from London.  You know what they are, Howat—­little wooden dolls to show off the fashion; but she made a harrowing joke, right in front of father and Mrs. Forsythe.  The things she says are just beyond description; it seems that it’s all right to talk anyway now if you call it classic.  And she has fans with pictures and rhymes on, honestly—­” words apparently failed her.

Howat laughed.  “Little Innocence,” he said.  He fell silent, thinking of their mother.  The court, he knew, had been her right, too, by birth; and he wondered if, with the reminder of Mrs. Winscombe and her reflections of St. James, she regretted her marriage and removal to the Province.  She was essentially lady, while Gilbert Penny had been the son of a small country squire.  He had seen a profile of his father as a young man, at the time he had first met Isabel Kingsfrere Howat.  It was a handsome profile, perhaps a shade heavy, but admirably balanced and stamped with decisive power.  He had characteristically invested almost his last shilling in a tract of eight hundred acres in Pennsylvania and the passage of himself and his bride to the Province.