his ditch,
and t'other into that--I'll take a dance, said I--so stay you here.

A sun-burnt daughter of Labour rose up from the groupe to meet me, as
I advanced towards them; her hair, which was a dark chesnut approaching
rather to a black, was tied up in a knot, all but a single tress.

We want a cavalier, said she, holding out both her hands, as if to offer
them--And a cavalier ye shall have; said I, taking hold of both of them.

Hadst thou, Nannette, been array'd like a duchesse!

--But that cursed slit in thy petticoat!

Nannette cared not for it.

We could not have done without you, said she, letting go one hand, with
self-taught politeness, leading me up with the other.

A lame youth, whom Apollo had recompensed with a pipe, and to which he
had added a tabourin of his own accord, ran sweetly over the prelude,
as he sat upon the bank--Tie me up this tress instantly, said Nannette,
putting a piece of string into my hand--It taught me to forget I was a
stranger--The whole knot fell down--We had been seven years acquainted.

The youth struck the note upon the tabourin--his pipe followed, and off
we bounded--'the duce take that slit!'

The sister of the youth, who had stolen her voice from heaven, sung
alternately with her brother--'twas a Gascoigne roundelay.

Viva la Joia!
Fidon la Tristessa!

The nymphs join'd in unison, and their swains an octave below them--

I would have given a crown to have it sew'd up--Nannette would not have
given a sous--Viva la joia! was in her lips--Viva la joia! was in her
eyes. A transient spark of amity shot across the space betwixt us--She
look'd amiable!--Why could I not live, and end my days thus? Just
Disposer of our joys and sorrows, cried I, why could not a man sit down
in the lap of content here--and dance, and sing, and say his prayers,
and go to heaven with this nut-brown maid? Capriciously did she bend her
head on one side, and dance up insidious--Then 'tis time to dance off,
quoth I; so changing only partners and tunes, I danced it away from
Lunel to Montpellier--from thence to Pescnas, Beziers--I danced it along
through Narbonne, Carcasson, and Castle Naudairy, till at last I danced
myself into Perdrillo's pavillion, where pulling out a paper of black
lines, that I might go on straight forwards, without digression or
parenthesis, in my uncle Toby's amours--

I begun thus--

Chapter 4.XXV.

--But softly--for in these sportive plains, and under