the wrath of her more Puritanical neighbor.

Then there were the men: busy at this moment with hurling wooden balls
along the alley, at the further end of which a hollow-eyed scraggy
youth, in shirt and rough linen trousers, was employed in propping up
again the fallen nine-pins. Squire John Boatfield had ridden over from
Eastry, Sir Timothy Harrison had come in his aunt's coach, and young
Squire Pyncheon with his doting mother.

And in the midst of all these sober folk, of young men in severe
garments, of portly dames and frowning squires, a girlish figure,
young, alert, vigorous, wearing with the charm of her own youth and
freshness the unbecoming attire, which disfigured her elders yet seemed
to set off her own graceful form, her dainty bosom and pretty arms. Her
kirtle, too, was plain, and dull in color, of a soft dovelike gray,
without adornment of any kind, but round her shoulders her kerchief was
daintily turned, edged with delicate lace, and showing through its filmy
folds peeps of her own creamy skin.

'Twas years later that Sir Peter Lely painted Lady Sue when she was a
great lady and the friend of the Queen: she was beautiful then, in the
full splendor of her maturer charms, but never so beautiful as she was
on that hot July afternoon in the year of our Lord 1657, when, heated
with the ardor of the game, pleased undoubtedly with the adulation which
surrounded her on every side, she laughed and chatted with the men,
teased the women, her cheeks aglow, her eyes bright, her brown
hair--persistently unruly--flying in thick curls over her neck and
shoulders.

"A remarkable talent, good Sir Marmaduke," Dame Harrison was saying to