nted his being knighted by the
Duke of York for his daring in the excitement of the critical
moment, a fact which Mistress Anne never forgot, though she only
knew it by hearsay, as it happened a few weeks after she was born,
and her father always averred that he was thankful to have missed
the barren and expensive honour, and that the _worst_ which had come
of his exploit was the royal sponsorship to his little maid.

Anne had, however, been the pet of her father's old friends, the sea
captains, had played with the little Evelyns under the yew hedges of
Says Court, had been taken to London to behold the Lord Mayor's show
and more than one Court pageant, had been sometimes at the palaces
as the plaything of the Ladies Mary and Anne of York, had been more
than once kissed by their father, the Duke, and called a pretty
little poppet, and had even shared with them a notable game at romps
with their good-natured uncle the King, when she had actually caught
him at Blind-man's-buff!

Ignorant as she was of evil, her old surroundings appeared to her
delightful, and Peregrine, bred in a Puritan home, was at fourteen
not much more advanced than she was in the meaning of the vices and
corruptions that he heard inveighed against in general or scriptural
terms at home, and was only too ready to believe that all that his
father proscribed must be enchanting. Thus they built castles
together about brilliant lives at a Court of which they knew as
little as of that at Timbuctoo.

There was another Court, however, of which Peregrine seemed to know
all the details, namely, that of King Oberon and Queen Mab. How
much was village lore picked up from Moll Owens and her kind, or how
much was the work of his own imagination, no one could tell,
probably not himself, certainly not Anne. When he appeared on
intimate terms with Hip, Nip, and Skip, and described catching Daddy
Long Legs to make a fence with his legs, or dwelt upon a terrible
fight between two armies of elves mounted on grasshoppers and
crickets, and armed with lances tipped with stings of bees and
wasps, she would exclaim, "Is it true, Perry?" and he would wink his
green eye and look at her with his yellow one till she hardly knew
where she was.

He would tell of his putting a hornet in a sluttish maid's shoe,
which was credible, if scarcely meriting that elfish laughter which
made his auditor shrink, but when he told of dancing over the mud
banks with a lantern, like a Wi