wn."

The Major immediately laughed.

"If," she continued, "your chin were less grim and craggy and your nose
a little different and your eyes less like gimlets and needles--if you
wore a modish French wig instead of a horsehair mat and had your
garments made by a London tailor instead of a country cobbler and
carpenter you would be almost attractive--by candle light."

"Is my wig so unmodish?" he enquired smiling a trifle ruefully, "'tis
my best."

"Unmodish?" White hands were lifted, and sparkling eyes rolled
themselves in agonised protest. "There's a new tie-wig come in--_un
peu negligee_--a most truly ravishing confection. As for clothes----"

"And needles," he added, "pray what of your promise?"

"Promise, sir?"

"You were to teach me how to sew on a button, I think?"

"Button!" she repeated, staring,

"If you've forgot, 'tis no matter, madam," said he and dropped very
nimbly from the wall.

"Ah, my forgetfulness hath angered you, sir."

"No, child, no, extreme youth is apt to be extreme thoughtless and
forgetful----"

"Sir, I am twenty-two."

"And I am forty-one!" he said wistfully.

"'Tis a monstrous great age, sir!"

"I begin to fear it is!" said he rather ruefully.

"And great age is apt to be peevish and slothful and childish and
fretful and must be ruled. So come you over the wall this instant,
sir!"

"And wherefore, madam?"

"'Tis so my will!"

"But----"

"Plague take it, sir, how may I sew on your abominable buttons with a
wall betwixt us? Over with you this moment--obey!"

The Major obeyed forthwith.

CHAPTER IV

CONCERNING THE BUTTONS OF THE RAMILLIE COAT

"Now pray remark, sir," said the Lady Elizabeth Carlyon, seating
herself in a shady arbour and taking up her needle and thread, "a
woman, instead of sucking her thread and rubbing it into a black spike
and cursing, threads her needle--so! Thereafter she takes the object
to be sewed and holds it--no, she can't, sir, while you sit so much
afar, prithee come closer to her--there! Yet no--'twill never
do--she'll be apt to prick you sitting thus----"

"If I took off my coat, madam----"

"'Twould be monstrous indecorous, sir! No, you must kneel down--here
at my feet!"

"But--madam----"

"To your knees, sir, or I'll prick you vilely! She now takes the
article to be sewed and--pray why keep at such a distance? She cannot
sew gracefully while you pull one way and she another! She then fits
on her thimble,