Mistress Stagg twisted her apron hem between thumb and finger. "She's more than eighteen, Charles, and anyhow, if I understand it rightly, she was never really bound to Darden. The law has no hold on her, for neither vestry nor Orphan Court had anything to do with placing her with Darden and Deborah. She's free to stay."
"Free to stay?" queried Charles, and took a prodigious pinch of snuff. "To stay with us?"
"Why not?" asked his wife, and stole a persuasive hand into that of her helpmate. "Oh, Charles, my heart went out to her! I made her so beautiful once, and I could do it again and all the time. Don't you think her prettier than was Jane Day? And she's graceful, and that quick to learn! You're such a teacher, Charles, and I know she'd do her best.... Perhaps, after all, there would be no need to send away to Bristol for one to take Jane's place."
"H'm!" said the great man thoughtfully, and bit a curl of Tamerlane's vast periwig. "'Tis true I esteem her no dullard," he at last vouchsafed; "true also that she hath beauty. In fine, solely to give thee pleasure, my Millamant, I will give the girl a trial no later than this very afternoon."
Audrey stirred in her sleep, spoke Haward's name, and sank again to rest. Mr. Stagg took a second pinch of snuff. "There's the scandal, my love. His Excellency the Governor's ball, Mr. Eliot's sermon, Mr. Marmaduke Haward's illness and subsequent duels with Mr. Everard and Mr. Travis, are in no danger of being forgotten. If this girl ever comes to the speaking of an epilogue, there'll be in Williamsburgh a nine days' wonder indeed!"
"The wonder would not hurt," said Mistress Stagg simply.
"Far from it, my dear," agreed Mr. Stagg, and closing his snuffbox, went with a thoughtful brow back to the playhouse and the Tartar camp.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE MISSION OF TRUELOVE
Mistress Truelove Taberer, having read in a very clear and gentle voice the Sermon on the Mount to those placid Friends, Tobias and Martha Taberer, closed the book, and went about her household affairs with a quiet step, but a heart that somehow fluttered at every sound without the door. To still it she began to repeat to herself words she had read: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God ... blessed are the peacemakers"—