“Lawk, My Lady!” cries the girl, splashing tears into the butter, reckless.
“‘Black ribbons,’ Chock! ‘A ghost,’ Chock! ‘McTart,’ Chock! Lord ha’ mercy! What’s to become o’ me?” Peggy’s tears smart her eyes as she flings the goose-quill over to a cheese on the shelf, where it sticks, and one day surprises the Vicar at his supper.
“Get out of my sight!” she flings after it. “I can’t write! Who can write out her heart and soul, when it’s devilish hard even to speak it. Oh! Would I were my brother for one fine half-hour!” cries Peggy, rising and stamping up and down the stone floor of the buttery.
“An’ if you were, Madam?” asks Chockey meekly, “what then?”
“I’d swear! Yea, would I! Such a lot of splendid oaths as’d ease my mind and let me hear from my own lips what a fool’s part I’d played with my own—my adored Percy! Could I but see him! as Kennaston says.” Peggy in her progress now upsets a pan of cream, and has genuine pleasure in splashing it about over her slippers as she speaks.
“But I! What am I? A girl! swaddled in petticoats and fallals; tethered to an apron, and a besom, and a harpsichord, and a needle,—yet can I snap a rapier, fire a pistol, jump a ditch, land a fish, for my brother taught me. Still it’s girl! girl! sit by the fire and spin! dawdle! dally!” The cream now spots up as far as Peggy’s chin and flecks its dimple.
“Stop-at-home, nor stir-abroad! Smile, ogle!” each word emphasized with heel and toe.
“And—” Lady Peggy now flops back into her chair, breathless, “wait on man’s will and whims,—that, Chock, ’s what ’tis to be a woman.”
“Aye, ’tis,” assents the waiting woman. “But yet, My Lady, if I dared make bold, there’s summat Your Ladyship might do, an My Lady, Your Ladyship’s mother, came back home again from her visit to your uncle in York.”
“Out with it!” says Peggy hopelessly, folding up her attempted letter and tucking it in her reticule.