"That manteau pins her arms to her sides," interrupted the minister calmly, "and the lace is dirty. You've hidden all her hair under that mazarine, and too many patches become not a brown skin. Turn around, child!"
While Audrey slowly revolved, the guardian of her fortunes, leaning back in his chair, bent his bushy brows and gazed, not at the circling figure in its tawdry apparel, but into the distance. When she stood still and looked at him with a half-angry, half-frightened face, he brought his bleared eyes to bear upon her, studied her for a minute, then motioned to his wife.
"She must take off this paltry finery, Deborah," he announced. "I'll have none of it. Go, child, and don your Cinderella gown."
"What does it all mean?" cried Audrey, with heaving bosom. "Why did she put these things upon me, and why will she tell me nothing? If Hugon has hand in it"—
The minister made a gesture of contempt. "Hugon! Hugon, half Monacan and half Frenchman, is bartering skins with a Quaker. Begone, child, and when you are transformed return to us."
When the door had closed he turned upon his wife. "The girl has been cared for," he said. "She has been fed,—if not with cates and dainties, then with bread and meat; she has been clothed,—if not in silk and lace, then in good blue linen and penistone. She is young and of the springtime, hath more learning than had many a princess of old times, is innocent and good to look at. Thou and the rest of thy sex are fools, Deborah, but wise men died not with Solomon. It matters not about her dress."
Rising, he went to a shelf of battered, dog-eared books, and taking down an armful proceeded to strew the volumes upon the table. The red blooms of the columbine being in the way, he took up the bunch and tossed it out of the window. With the light thud of the mass upon the ground eyes of husband and wife met.
"Hugon would marry the girl," said the latter, twisting the hem of her apron with restless fingers.
Without change of countenance, Darden leaned forward, seized her by the shoulder and shook her violently. "You are too given to idle and meaningless words, Deborah," he declared, releasing her. "By the Lord, one of these days I'll break you of the habit for good and all! Hugon, and scarlet flowers, and who will marry Audrey, that is yet but a child and useful about the house,—what has all this to do with the matter in hand, which is simply to make ourselves and our house presentable in the eyes of my chief parishioner? A man would think that thirteen years in Virginia would teach any fool the necessity of standing well with a powerful gentleman such as this. I'm no coward. Damn sanctimonious parsons and my Lord Bishop's Scotch hireling! If they yelp much longer at my heels, I'll scandalize them in good earnest! It's thin ice, though,—it's thin ice; but I like this house and glebe, and I'm going to live and die in them,—and die drunk, if I choose, Mr. Commissary to the contrary! It's of import, Deborah, that my parishioners, being easy folk, willing to live and let live, should like me still, and that a majority of my vestry should not be able to get on without me. With this in mind, get out the wine, dust the best chair, and be ready with thy curtsy. It will be time enough to cry Audrey's banns when she is asked in marriage."
Audrey, in her brown dress, with the color yet in her cheeks, entering at the moment, Mistress Deborah attempted no response to her husband's adjuration. Darden turned to the girl. "I've done with the writing for the nonce, child," he said, "and need you no longer. I'll smoke a pipe and think of my sermon. You're tired; out with you into the sunshine! Go to the wood or down by the creek, but not beyond call, d'ye mind."