"Modest forsooth!" giggled the fish-fag diabolically, and seizing one of Jonathan's fat hands in her bony fingers, she drew it over the other's face.
"Look, see the white streaks on her now! She reddened, the hussy,—or I'm not a Gobie!"
"Yes, I was vain," answered the most prated-about of female Knickerbockers. "I used countless beautifiers—pearl powders, cherry salve, cupid's tints. Everything Mr. Gaine sold at the Crown. They hooked the men. When pearl powders came upon the market, I received three offers—Jenks—a tutor at King's College—not the President, as the report remains on earth—wrote me a poem in the Weekly Gossiper, called 'Pink and White Amanda.'"
"Jane Knickerbocker," said the ghost who was giving the party, "your family has spent many hours telling the present generation of your womanly virtues, and they cannot fail in having an overweening respect for any opinion you may utter. Shall this girl who bears your blood marry yon youth?"
"Let them wed by all means, if they see advantage in it. I vow if I could come back to earth and live my twenty-eight years over again, I would join hands with Jean, our Elizabeth-Town perfumer."
Lord Cornbury and the shades about him were bowed with mirth.
"Janet, you giddy girl, though half the age of most of us, I protest you are becoming a wit. You will be getting into society next," he cried. "I shall never be mean enough to tell that in sublunary times one of the first American Knickerbockers knew me intimately only as my valet."
"A fig for your class distinctions," called the fair indignant, hunting for a rouge rag. "Years ago we heard ''twas money made the court circle at York.' Why, you must remember how you feared your creditors when they first came below."
"Alack, indeed," said his Lordship plaintively, "this hooped petticoat was never paid for."