“You have but to look in a pier-glass,” I retorted.  “And, besides, that is not sufficient.  You will want some rhyming couplet out of a mythology before you are content.”

She laughed again.

“Sir,” answered she, “but you have wit, if you can but be got angry.”

She leaned over the dial’s face, and began to draw the Latin numerals with her finger.  So arch, withal, that I forgot my ill-humour.

“If you would but agree to stay angry for a day,” she went on, in a low tone, “perhaps—­”

“Perhaps?”

“Perhaps you would be better company,” said Dorothy.  “You would surely be more entertaining.”

“Dorothy, I love you,” I said.

“To be sure.  I know that,” she replied.  “I think you have said that before.”

I admitted it sadly.  “But I should be a better husband than Dr. Courtenay.”

“La!” cried she; “I am not thinking of husbands.  I shall have a good time, sir, I promise you, before I marry.  And then I should never marry you.  You are much too rough, and too masterful.  And you would require obedience.  I shall never obey any man.  You would be too strict a master, sir.  I can see it with your dogs and your servants.  And your friends, too.  For you thrash any boy who does not agree with you.  I want no rough squire for a husband.  And then, you are a Whig.  I could never marry a Whig.  You behaved disgracefully at King William’s School last year.  Don’t deny it!”

“Deny it!” I cried warmly; “I would as soon deny that you are an arrant flirt, Dorothy Manners, and will be a worse one.”

“Yes, I shall have my fling,” said the minx.  “I shall begin to-night, with you for an audience.  I shall make the doctor look to himself.  But there is the dressing-bell.”  And as we went into the house, “I believe my mother is a Whig, Richard.  All the Brices are.”

“And yet you are a Tory?”

“I am a loyalist,” says my lady, tossing her head proudly; “and we are one day to kiss her Majesty’s hand, and tell her so.  And if I were the Queen,” she finished in a flash, “I would teach you surly gentlemen not to meddle.”

And she swept up the stairs so stately, that Scipio was moved to say slyly:  “Dem’s de kind of ladies, Marse Richard, I jes dotes t’ wait on!”

Of the affair at King William’s School I shall tell later.

We had some dozen guests staying at the Hall for the ball.  At dinner my grandfather and the gentlemen twitted her, and laughed heartily at her apt retorts, and even toasted her when she was gone.  The ladies shook their heads and nudged one another, and no doubt each of the mothers had her notion of what she would do in Mrs. Manners’s place.  But when my lady came down dressed for the ball in her pink brocade with the pearls around her neck, fresh from the hands of Nester and those of her own tremulous mammy, Mr. Carvel must needs go up to her and hold her at arm’s length in admiration, and then kiss her on both her cheeks.  Whereat she blushed right prettily.