The moment was a pregnant one.  But I was resolved to carry the matter out with a bold front.  “Will you join us at catch and swing?” I asked.

Will promptly declared that he would join, for Patty was good to look upon.  Dolly glanced at her dress, tossed her head, and marched back alone.

“Oh, Richard!” cried Patty; “I shall never forgive myself!  I have made you quarrel with—­”

“His sweetheart,” said Will, wickedly.

“I don’t care,” said I. Which was not so.

Patty felt no resentment for my miss’s haughty conduct, but only a tearful penitence for having been the cause of a strife between us.  Will’s arguments and mine availed nothing.  I must lift her over the wall again, and she went home.  When we reached the garden we found Dolly seated beside her mother on my grandfather’s bench, from which stronghold our combined tactics were powerless to drag her.

When Dolly was gone, I asked my grandfather in great indignation why Patty did not play with the children I knew, with Dorothy and the Fotheringays.  He shook his head dubiously.  “When you are older, Richard, you will understand that our social ranks are cropped close.  Mr. Swain is an honest and an able man, though he believes in things I do not.  I hear he is becoming wealthy.  And I have no doubt,” the shrewd old gentleman added, “that when Patty grows up she will be going to the assemblies, though it was not so in my time.”  So liberal was he that he used to laugh at my lifting her across the wall, and in his leisure delight to listen to my accounts of her childish housekeeping.  Her life was indeed a contrast to Dorothy’s.  She had all the solid qualities that my lady lacked in early years.  And yet I never wavered in my liking to the more brilliant and wayward of the two.  The week before my next birthday, when Mr. Carvel drew me to him and asked me what I wished for a present that year, as was his custom, I said promptly: 

“I should like to have Patty Swain at my party, sir.”

“So you shall, my lad,” he cried, taking his snuff and eying me with pleasure.  “I am glad to see, Richard, that you have none of Mr. Marmaduke’s nonsense about you.  She is a good girl, i’ faith, and more of a lady now than many who call themselves such.  And you shall have your present to boot.  Hark’ee, Daniel,” said he to the captain; “if the child comes to my house, the poll-parrots and follow-me-ups will be wanting her, too.”

But the getting her to go was a matter of five days.  For Patty was sensitive, like her father, and dreaded a slight.  Not so with Master Tom, who must, needs be invited, too.  He arrived half an hour ahead of time, arrayed like Solomon, and without his sister!  I had to go for Patty, indeed, after the party had begun, and to get the key to the wicket in the wall to take her in that way, so shy was she.  My dear grandfather showed her particular attention.  And Miss Dolly herself, being in the humour, taught her a minuet.