"Bring me a chair, Meg, and place it before Sir Alurde's portrait. Thank you, child. I soon grow weary if I keep on my feet. Is this Dan's picture?"
"Yes--from memory."
"It is certainly very like the Elizabethan. But, as you have seen Sir Alurde's face some hundreds of times, and this vagabond's but once, I fancy you must unconsciously have drawn the countenance of the former."
"No; I have drawn Dan's face. It is true," added Meg, demurely--"it is true that I have only spoken once to Sir Alurde's double, but I have seen him at least a dozen times. Often and often I have been hidden in the pine trees above his dell, and looked down on him without his knowing I was there. And sometimes I have sung songs and led him a dance through the wood, like Puck did the Athenian lovers. You yourself, Miss Linisfarne, said that I was quick at catching a likeness; and if that sketch is not as like Dan as Sir Alurde is like him, then call me--well, anything you please."
"You foolish, foolish child!" said Miss Linisfarne, letting the sketch fall on her lap. "How can you indulge in such wild ways? Do you not know that you are twenty years of age, and must not act like an uneducated rustic?"
"I am a rustic," replied Meg, smiling--"but not uneducated, thanks to you and Mr. Jarner. Oh," she continued, laughing at the recollection, "if you only had seen his face when I spoke like the villagers! He nearly fainted with surprise and horror."
"I don't wonder at it," said Miss Linisfarne, severely. "You have no business to play such tricks. If this man is a gentleman, which I can hardly believe, he must have been shocked at your illiterate speech."
"He was--very much shocked," assented Miss Merle, readily; "but I only spoke half a dozen words in the style of Audrey. Afterwards my language was most correct."
"What did you converse about, child?"
"I am afraid we talked nonsense! But as it was our first meeting, you can hardly wonder at that. He asked me to visit him in his dell."