“Again, again, child!” cries Mr. Gay eagerly. “That was my Polly’s very laugh. If you can give us that for certain, I’ll overlook the nose (—not but what your nose is very well otherwise!) and the inch too much. Laugh again, child!”
She did and naturally, for the queer man and his queer cap and gown so impressed her that ’twas no hard task. Mr. Rich looked on delighted as Gay cried:
“And your speaking voice, girl? Speak for me! My Polly is an arch rogue, but demure as a little Quakeress when she will. O a delicious slut! She hath a voice of music and can sidle and wheedle her way into a man’s heart when most he closes it against her. Canst do that, child?”
She looked up beneath the veil of long eyelashes and smiled slowly, dropping a curtsey until her hoop settled low on the ground, and keeping her eyes fixed all the time on Mr. Gay as she rose again. She was no longer frightened. Trust a woman to know when her dart goes home. She clasped her little hands, and acted very passably for a beginner.
“O Sir, with a kind word to cheer me you shall see I am your very Polly. My nose, I cannot help it, though I pray its pardon if it offends you. And for my height— Do but look at my heels! Sure I can wear them flat if you will and there’s your Polly—just so high as your heart. No higher!”
With her face all sparkling and beseeching like an April day, she raised her petticoats an inch and displayed a little foot adorably perched on a ridiculous high heel like a porcelain shepherdess. But Mr. Gay heeded not the foot though Mr. Rich marked it well.
“The voice—the air! Perfection’s self,” he cries, “I forgive the nose. Indeed of its kind ’tis charming, though I would have Polly’s a little less correct in outline. But the voice! ’Tis as soft as a wood-dove’s and assaults the senses like a rose perfume. She’ll do, Mr. Rich. Your old discrimination is not run altogether to seed as I supposed. Let’s pray she falls in love with Walker, though I hold him but a dull rogue for my Macheath.”
“He’ll do!” says Mr. Rich briefly. “But I’m content you’re content, Mr. Gay. Indeed she’s the right stuff, and so you’ll say when you hear her warble. Not but what she wants training enough and to spare. ’Tis only in the fables that Minerva springs full armed from the head of Jove. But the stuff’s there. Sir, we shall do.”
“My dear,” says Mr. Gay, snuffing and fumbling for his handkerchief; “Mr. Rich says right. You’ll do. Be not too proud and perked up for teaching. Be docile, womanly and obedient, and you’ll be the very rod with which I’ll hit the court in the face and hold up its follies to the public. Go—you’re a pretty girl and a good. I like you well. But stay a minute—” (and here he became awful) “No running after the fellows while the work’s in hand. No junketing;—all sober earnest. This I condition for.”
“She won’t need to run after the fellows,” cries Mr. Rich, bursting into a great laugh, “They’ll do the running. Better instruct your Polly in the art of escaping, Mr. Gay. ’Tis that must be her study. Canst bridle, Miss Polly, when they become too ardent?”