"You will, perchance, think better of it when you see the mantle," said the Skipper, carelessly, and then added with a saucy smile, "women are changeful, Master Collector; I will bring the gewgaw for Mistress Blanche's inspection—a chapman may have that privilege."
"You may spare yourself the trouble," said the maiden.
"Nay, mistress, think it not a trouble, I beseech you; I count nothing a trouble which shall allow me to please thy fancy." As the Skipper uttered this he came still nearer to the chair on which Blanche was seated, and, almost in a whisper, said, "I pray you, mistress, think not so lightly of my wish to serve you. I have set my heart upon your taking the mantle."
"Master Skipper, a word with you," interrupted the Secretary, who had watched the whole scene; and aware of the annoyance which Cocklescraft's rudeness inflicted upon the maiden, had quietly approached him and now beckoned him to a recess of the window, where they might converse without being heard by the company. "It is not civil to importune the lady in this fashion. You must be satisfied with her answer as she has given it to you. It vexes the daughter of Master Warden to be thus besought. I pray you, sir, no more of it."
Cocklescraft eyed the Secretary for a moment with a glance of scornful resentment, and then replied in a voice inaudible to all but the person to whom it was addressed. "Right! perhaps you are right, sir; but when I would be tutored for my behaviour, he shall be a man, by my troth, who takes that duty on him, and shall wear a beard and sword both. I needed not thy schooling, master crotchet-monger!" Then leaving the Secretary, he strode towards the maiden, and assuming a laughing face, which but awkwardly concealed his vexation, he said, "well, Mistress Blanche, since you are resolved that you will not take my poor bauble off my hands, I must give it over as a venture lost, and so an end of it. I were a fool to be vexed because I could not read the riddle of a maiden's fancy: how should such fish of the sea be learned in so gentle a study? So, viaggio, it shall break no leg of mine! I will dance none the less merrily for it at the feast: and as for the mantle, why it may find other shoulders in the Port, though it shall never find them so fit to wear it withal, as the pretty shoulders of Mistress Blanche. Master Warden I must fain take my leave; my people wait me at the quay. Fair weather for the feast, and a merry time of it, ladies! A Dios, Master Collector!"
The gaiety of this leaving-taking was dashed with a sternness of manner which all the Skipper's acting could not conceal, and as he walked towards the door, he paused a moment to touch Albert Verheyden's cloak and whispered in his ear, "We shall be better acquainted, sir;" then leaving the house he rapidly shaped his course towards the town.
He had scarcely got out of sight before Blanche sprang from her chair and ran towards her father, pouring out upon him a volley of reproof for his unadvised and especially unauthorized invitation of the Skipper to the festival. The maiden was joined in this assault by her auxiliaries, the Proprietary's sister and Mistress Alice, who concurred in reading the simple-minded and unconsciously offending old gentleman a lecture upon his improvident interference in this delicate matter. They insisted that Cocklescraft's associations in the port gave him no claim to such a favour, and that, at all events, it was Blanche's prerogative to be consulted in regard to the admission of the younger and gayer portions of her company.
"Have you not had your will, my dear father," was the summing up of Blanche's playful attack, "to your full content, in summoning all the old humdrum folks of the province, even to the Dominie and his wife, who have never been known to go to a merry-making any where, and who are both so deaf that they have not heard each other speak this many a day? and now you must needs be bringing the Skipper hither."
"Lackaday, wench! what have I done to redden thy brow?" interrupted Mr. Warden, with a face of perplexed good humour, unable longer to bear the storm of rebuke, or to parry the arguments which were so eagerly thrust at him; "I warrant now I have made mischief without knowing how! The Skipper is a free blade, of good metal, and of a figure, too, which, methinks, might please a damsel in a dance, and spare us all this coil; his leg has not its fellow in the province. You take me to task roundly, when all the while I was so foolish as to believe I was doing you regardful service."
"He hath a wicked look, father," was Blanche's reply; "and a saucy freedom which I like not. He is ever too bold in his greeting, and lacks gentle breeding. He must come to me, forsooth, with his mantle, as an especial token, and set upon me with so much constancy to take it! Take a mantle from him! I have never even seen him but twice before, and then it was in church, where he must needs claim to speak to me as if he were an old acquaintance! I will none of him nor his mantle, if he were fifty times a properer man than he is!"