DIANA. Shall we—must we have—servants?
MYSELF. To be sure.
DIANA (dismally). That's it! I shouldn't mind the earls s' much—it's the grand servants as would bother me. And then—O Peregrine—if ever I talked wrong or—acted wrong—not like a lady should—O Peregrine, would you be—ashamed o' me?
MYSELF. No, no—I swear it!
DIANA. I never wanted to be a lady—but I do now, Peregrine, for your sake.
MYSELF. You are good and brave and noble, Diana, and this is better than all the fine-ladyishness in the world.
DIANA (wistfully). Well, I wish I was a lady, all the same.
MYSELF. You will soon learn, you who are so quick and clever.
It was at this period that she began to purchase books and study them with passionate earnestness, more especially one, a thin, delicate volume that piqued my curiosity since, judging by her puckered brow and profound abstraction, this seemed to trouble and perplex her not a little.
"Peregrine," she enquired suddenly one morning, as I leaned, somewhat short of breath, upon the long shaft of the sledge-hammer, "Peregrine, what's a moo?"