She bit deep into her fruit and stared out over the moors below.
"Am not going to be a woman," she said. "I hate them."
"They hate thee," said Eldershawe, with a chuckle, "and will hate thee worse when thou wearest brocades and a farthingale."
"I have watched them," proceeded Mistress Clo. "They cannot keep their mouths shut. If they have a secret they must tell it, whether 'tis their own or another's. They clack, they tell lies, they cry and scream out if they are hurt; but they will hurt anything which cannot hurt them back. They run and weep to each other when they are in love and a man slights them. They have no spirit and no decency." She said it with such an earnest solemness that her companions shouted with laughter.
"She sits in her breeches—the unruliest baggage in Gloucestershire," cried Eldershawe, "and complains that fine ladies are not decent. What would they say if they heard thee?"
"They may hear me when they will," said Mistress Clo, springing to her feet with a light jump and sending the last of her apple whizzing into space with a boyish throw. "'Tis I who am the modest woman—for all my breeches and manners. I do not see indecency where there is none—for the mere pleasure of ogling and bridling and calling attention to my simpering. I should have seen no reason for airs and graces if I had been among those on the bank when the fine young Marquess we heard of saved the boat-load on the river and gave orders for the reviving of the drowned man—in his wet skin. When 'tis spoke of—for 'tis a favourite story—that little beast Tantillion hides her face behind her fan and cries, 'Oh, Lud! thank Heaven I was not near. I should have swooned away at the very sight.'"
She imitated the affected simper of a girl in such a manner that the three sportsmen yelled with delight, and Roxholm himself gnawed his lip to check an involuntary break into laughter.
"What didst say to her the day she bridled over it at Knepton, when the young heir was there?" said Crowell, grinning. "I was told thou disgraced thyself, Clo. What saidst thou?"
She was standing her full straight height among them and turned, with her hands in her pockets and a grave face.
"My blood was hot," she answered. "I said, 'Damn thee for a lying little fool!' That thou wouldst not!"