“Mayhap you could persuade, by much weeping and praying, falling into swoons and such like, that Her Ladyship would take you up to London! Once there, Sir Percy couldn’t keep his distance from you.”
Peggy looks at Chockey as if she were a vision sent from on high; then, quickly succeeding derision curls her lip.
“My Lady mother take a squealing chit like me up to town! Never! She’d say my manners weren’t fit, or my figger, or my wardrobe. Lud! Chock! Bethink thee, lass, of my gowns in London town! and me no more acquainted with the ways yonder, than our Brindle is with the family pew!”
Lady Peggy walked out into the paddock, rubbed the cream from her slippers on the turf; caressed the ponies; munched the sweet cake she had in her apron-pocket, felt the keen sweet air blow over her hot forehead, and saw, dancing ever before her mind’s eye, that insidious sweet suggestion of “going up to London.”
How did one go up to London?
In the coach: aye to be sure; and the coach left the “Mermaid” in the village every Tuesday and Thursday at five in the morning. The coach! The splendid coach, a-swinging on its springs like a gigantic cradle; the postillions a-snapping their whips, the coachman a-cracking his long lash and a-shouting “All h’up for London!” and the ladies and gentlemen—well armed, these last, in dread of the highwaymen on the heath—all a-piling in and a-settling themselves; and the guards a-tooting their horns, the landlady and the boots and the maids and the hostlers all a-bowing and a-scraping and—off they go! for London town—where Percy was a-pining and a-dying for her, so her twin writ in his letter.
Well, Lady Peggy went in, clapt on a fresh gown and shoes, and never was daughter more tender and patient with crabbed, gouty, crusty dad than she all through that lovely day. Playing backgammon; spelling out the newspaper; trouncing the cat when it jumped on His Lordship’s leg; blowing the fire; wheeling his chair from hither to yon; stroking the bald head; combing the white whiskers; and finally said she,
“Daddy, London’s a very big sort of a place, now, isn’t it?”
The Earl nods, coddling his leg into the slip of sunshine that’s walking westerly away from him.
“My brother lodges, so he says, at the corner of Holywell Road and Lark Lane; tell me, dad, where should that be now?” Lady Peggy has a careless air, and flecks a buzzing fly out of His Lordship’s bowl of porridge.