night was ended, and he endeavoured to bear himself with at least an
outward air of patience until he beheld his opportunity.

When the last dish was removed and bottles and bumpers stood upon the
board, she sprang up on her chair and stood before them all, smiling down
the long table with eyes like flashing jewels. Her hands were thrust in
her pockets--with her pretty young fop's air, and she drew herself to her
full comely height, her beauteous lithe limbs and slender feet set
smartly together. Twenty pairs of masculine eyes were turned upon her
beauty, but none so ardently as the young one's across the table.

"Look your last on my fine shape," she proclaimed in her high, rich
voice. "You will see but little of the lower part of it when it is hid
in farthingales and petticoats. Look your last before I go to don my
fine lady's furbelows."

And when they filled their glasses and lifted them and shouted admiring
jests to her, she broke into one of her stable-boy songs, and sang it in
the voice of a skylark.

No man among them was used to showing her the courtesies of polite
breeding. She had been too long a boy to them for that to have entered
any mind, and when she finished her song, sprang down, and made for the
door, Sir John beheld his long-looked-for chance, and was there before
her to open it with a great bow, made with his hand upon his heart and
his fair locks falling.

"You rob us of the rapture of beholding great beauties, Madam," he said
in a low, impassioned voice. "But there should be indeed but _one_ happy
man whose bliss it is to gaze upon such perfections."