"I wonder," Nancy whispered so that none but her mistress could hear, "if he is going to run in the races himself?" which evoked from the Lady Harriet the first smile that had played around her lips that day. Seeing this and attributing it to her pleasure at his invitation Sir Tristan sighed like a wheezy bellows and cast sentimental glances at her with his watery eyes. To stop this ridiculous exhibition of vanity her ladyship straightway sent him trotting about the room on various petty pretexts. "Fetch my fan, Sir!—Now my smelling salts—I feel a draught. Would you close the window, cousin? Ah, I stifle for want of air! Open it again!"
To these commands Sir Tristan responded with as much alacrity as his stiff joints would permit, until Nancy again whispered to her mistress, "See! He is running for the prize!"
Likely enough Sir Tristan's fair cousin soon would have sent him on some errand that would have taken him out of her presence. But when he opened the window again, in came the strains of a merry chorus sung by fresh, happy voices of young women who, evidently, were walking along the highway. The Lady Harriet's curiosity was piqued. Who were these women over whose lives ennui never seemed to have hung like a pall? Nancy knew all about them. They were servants on the way to the Richmond fair to hire themselves out to the farmers, according to time-honoured custom.
Photo by White
Ober and De Luca; Caruso and Hempel in “Martha”
The Richmond fair! To her ladyship's jaded senses it conveyed a suggestion of something new and frolicsome. "Nancy," she cried, carried away with the novelty of the idea, "let us go to the fair dressed as peasant girls and mingle with the crowd! Who knows, someone might want to hire us! I will call myself Martha, you can be Julia, and you, cousin, can drop your title for the nonce and go along with us as plain Bob!" And when Sir Tristan, shocked at the thought that a titled lady should be willing so to lower herself, to say nothing of the part he himself was asked to play, protested, she appealed to him with a feigned tenderness that soon won his consent to join them in their lark. Then to give him a foretaste of what was expected of him, they took him, each by an arm, and danced him about the room, shouting with mock admiration as he half slid, half stumbled, "Bravo! What grace! What agility!"
The Lady Harriet actually was enjoying herself.