I'm mighty dear for the gilded crew this
time!"

Madame Radisson said she was glad of it; for when Pierre was rich they
could take a fine house in the West End like my Lord So-and-So; but in
the next breath she begged him not to call the Royalists a gilded crew.

"And who is this?" she asked, turning to me as the servants brought in
candles.

"Egad, and you might have asked that before you tried to kiss him! You
always did have a pretty choice, Mary! I knew it when you took me!
That," says he, pointing to me, "that is the kite's tail!"

"But for convenience' sake, perhaps the kite's tail may have a name,"
retorts Madame Radisson.

"To be sure--to be sure--Stanhope, a young Royalist kinsman of yours."

"Royalist?" reiterates Mary Kirke with a world of meaning to the
high-keyed question, "then my welcome was no mistake! Welcome waits
Royalists here," and she gave me her hand to kiss just as an elderly
woman with monster white ringlets all about her face and bejewelled
fingers and bare shoulders and flowing draperies swept into the room,
followed by a serving-maid and a page-boy. With the aid of two men, her
daughter, a serving-maid, and the page, it took her all of five minutes
by the clock to get herself seated. But when her slippered feet were on
a Persian rug and the displaced ringlets of her monster wig adjusted by
the waiting abigail and smelling-salts put on a marquetry table nearby
and the folds of the gown righted by the page-boy, Lady Kirke extended a
hand to receive our compliments. I mind she called Radisson her "dear,
sweet savage," and bade him have a care not to squeeze the stones of her
rings into the flesh of her fingers.

"As if any man would want to squeeze such a ragbag o' tawdry finery and
milliners' tinsel," said Radisson afterward to me.

I, being younger, was "a dear, bold fellow," with a tap of her fan to the
words and a look over the top of it like to have come from some saucy
jade of sixteen.

After which the serving-maid must hand the smelling-salts and the
page-boy haste to stroke out her train.

"Egad," says Radisson when my lady had informed us that Sir John would
await Sieur Radisson's coming at the Fur Company's offices, "egad,
there'll be no getting Ramsay away till he sees some one else!"

"And who is that?" simpers Lady Kirke, languishing behind her fan.

"Who, indeed, but the little maid we sent from the north sea."

"La," cries Lady Kirke with a sudden livening, "a