“Ha, Pierre,” I heard his sweetheart say in a high unnatural voice as they passed. “You see I ride in disguise now. Will you turn and accompany us? I have a new groom. Monsieur St. Vincent, this is Pierre, the barber.”
Pierre looked surprised. Evidently Annetje was not copying with success her gentle mistress’ manner. She seemed to know this fact, for her next words contained a half apology for her behavior.
“Don’t look amazed, my little friend. You see I have a disguise to keep up now, and I practice by the way. I should have brought Annetje to accompany me—ah, you wish I had? My father could not spare us both. You waste too much time on the little flirt, Pierre.”
“She is severe at times,” he answered mournfully. “I sometimes grow so weary waiting for her to come round.”
“Bah! You are a milky lover to say so. I’d wait a life-time if I were you. Alas, all men are alike! She is right when she says that you are a white-livered, chicken-hearted snip of a coward not worth the cheese in a mousetrap. Pooh, you are a fine lover. Good Lord deliver me!”
“Oh, Mistress Miriam, does she say all that? If you only knew how I do everything she tells me, and stand on my toes from morning till night when she is around, and I have corns to boot, and fetch her ribbons, and she won’t even cross the Kissing Bridge, where everybody does if they are no nearer than half a mile.”
“To the kennels with your love if that is all it’s worth.”
In her last exclamation Annetje had dropped into her natural voice. Pierre was so down-hearted that he did not notice the change; but Annetje, fearing to expose herself further, galloped ahead and Pierre took his place by my side. As for me, I had little enough of sympathy for him, and felt more in a mood for laughing. If there is anything on this earth I cannot abide it is a whiny lover. I remember once a fellow whose opinion of himself was better than most folks’ and he used to go about from morning to night with his face as long as a cucumber thinking all the while of what he might have been doing while another fellow came in and ran off with the prize before his eyes. I was minded to tell Pierre the story of this fellow and how he went into a decline and died without as much sympathy as would go to make an ordinary case of the blues, but he got so quick to work upon his other concerns that I forgot all about it till the time was past.
“This is an odd manner for the young mistress,” he said. “But I suppose she is glad to get out again. Annetje says that the patroon keeps her close. I told her that I should ride along the road here every day. I did not know when I should meet you, but I knew that you would come along some day. I wish Annetje had come.”
“There were strange happenings at the manor-house to-day, Pierre.”