"Madam," said I, "you have forced my secret from me. I know that your family is staunch on the Whig side; and yet, ere the thief goes, may he not trust you will ne'er betray him?"
And now she came to me, all penitence and dimples.
"But it was you who said you were a thief," my dear mistress pointed out.
"O Lord, madam!" said I, "'twas very necessary that Degge should think me so. A house-breaker they would have only hanged, but a Jacobite they would have hanged and quartered afterward."
"Ah, Frank, do not speak of such fearful matters, but forgive me instantly!" she wailed.
And I was about to do so in what I considered the most agreeable and appropriate manner when the madcap broke away from me, and sprang upon a footstool and waved her fan defiantly.
"Down with the Elector!" she cried, in her high, sweet voice. "Long live
King James!"
And then, with a most lovely wildness of mien, she began to sing:
"Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
Ken ye the rhyme to porringer?
King James the Seventh had ae daughter—"
until I interrupted her. For, "Extraordinary creature!" I pleaded, "you will rouse the house."