"But come down to dinner, my dear. You will have your revenge when the men see you. There, the Governor dislikes to wait. He has sent up to say dinner is ready."
"I want my gown," said the Pearl, "and I will not go down." Only anger kept her from tears.
"But the Governor must see you. Come, no one will know, and, bless me! but you are a beauty!"
"Isn't she?" they cried in chorus. A glance at the mirror and a triumphant sense of victorious capacities to charm swept over the hesitating girl. Life of late had been as gray as her garb.
"Come, dear. You really must. You are making too much, quite too much, of a bit of innocent fun. If you wait to dress, I shall have to explain it all, and the Governor will say you lack courage; and must I say I left you in tears? And the mutton, my dear child—think of the mutton!"
"I am not in tears, and I hate you all, every one of you; but I will go."
Her head was up, as fan in hand she went down in front of the cousins, now mildly penitent, Mrs. Penn at her side. "Did they think to show off an awkward Quaker cousin, these thoughtless kittens? Give them a lesson, my dear."
"I mean to," said Margaret, her eyes flashing.
The men were about the fire in the great drawing-room, one little girl just slipping out, the future wife of Henry Baring. The party was large—young Mr. Rawle and General Wayne and the Peters from Belmont near by.