“I know!” cries he; “none better.  Well I recall the salmon and white your mother gave you before I came to Salem.”  He sighed and then laughed at the recollection.  “And when this strapping young Singleton comes, Richard, ’twould do you good to be hiding there in that cupboard,—­and it would hold you,—­and count the seconds until Miss Prim has her skirt in her hand and her foot on the lower step.  And yet how innocent is she now before you and me.”

Here he would invariably be smothered.

“Percy Singleton!” says Patty, with a fine scorn; “’twill be Mr. Eglinton, the curate, next.”

“This I know,” says her father, slapping me on the shoulder, “this I know, that you are content to see Richard without primping.”

“But I have known Richard since I was six,” says she.  “Richard is one of the family.  There is no need of disguise from him.”

I thought, ruefully enough, that it seemed my fate to be one of the family everywhere I went.

And just then, as if in judgment, the gate snapped and the knocker sounded, and Patty leaped down with a blush.  “What said I say?” cries the barrister.  “I have not seen human nature in court for naught.  Run, now,” says he, pinching her cheek as she stood hesitating whether to fly or stay; “run and put on the new dress I have bought you.  And Richard and I will have a cup of ale in the study.”

The visitor chanced to be Will Fotheringay that time.  He was not the only one worn out with the mad chase in Prince George Street, and preferred a quiet evening with a quiet beauty to the crowded lists of Miss Manners.  Will declared that the other gallants were fools over the rare touch of blue in the black hair:  give him Miss Swain’s, quoth he, lifting his glass,—­hers was; the colour of a new sovereign.  Will was not, the only one.  But I think Percy Singleton was the best of them all, tho’ Patty ridiculed him—­every chance she got, and even to his face.  So will:  the best-hearted and soberest of women play the coquette.  Singleton was rather a reserved young Englishman of four and twenty, who owned a large estate in Talbot which he was laying out with great success.  Of a Whig family in the old country, he had been drawn to that party in the new, and so, had made Mr. Swain’s acquaintance.  The next step in his fortunes was to fall in love with Patty, which was natural enough.  Many a night that winter I walked with him from Gloucester Street to the Coffee House, to sit an hour over, a battle.  And there Master Tom and Dr. Hamilton, and other gay macaronies would sometimes join us.  Singleton had a greater contempt for Tom than I, but bore with him for his sister’s sake.  For Tom, in addition to his other follies, was become an open loyalist, and never missed his Majesty’s health, though he knew no better than my Hugo the question at issue.  ’Twas not zeal for King George, however, that made him drunk at one of the assemblies, and forced his sister to leave in the midst of a dance for very shame.