CHAPTER I.

The Lady Henrietta--no, I will not divulge her surname--the Lady Henrietta was ennuyed and bored--though she lived in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, the honest fact is, that being bored, Henrietta was far from agreeable, as two persons knew, to wit, Nancy, her ladyship’s sharp waiting maid, and Lord Tristram, who was old and a fool.

A fool decidedly--for courting a young and handsome woman. Hence, by inference, you see that the Lady Henrietta was young and handsome. Yes, young, handsome, rich, noble, healthy, and miserable!

She could not tell anybody why she was miserable, but on one particular day, when her ladyship was rather more miserable than usual, within her castle at Richmond; at Richmond statute fair some hundred yards off, not a single lassie offering herself out for hire, on the dismal conditions of that day, but was happier than my Lady Henrietta.

On that particular morning she was sitting snappishly at her toilette--though, indeed, she was naturally good-tempered; but aristocracy _has_ its miseries, or where _would_ the balance of things be?--when Lord Tristam arrived. One might have solemnly declared, without seeing my lord’s face, that my lord had been tripped up by youth and had never overtaken that early visitor. The way in which the fair Henrietta treated him was a satire upon man’s supremacy--indeed, this lord of Cosmos was a supreme fool.

The old youngster coming in, she told him to kneel. He did. She told him to get up. He did. She bade him shut the window. Click went the latch. Immediately he heard the command to open it again. Then and there he did it, and was rewarded by the sight of a pair of scornful shoulders.

And it was just when her ladyship was stamping her foot pettishly, and the lord looking on in a doleful state, that, i’faith, such happy sounds of singing stole through the window! Why, the voices must have belonged to creatures as happy as lords. No, no, no; a mistake, kind reader, a mistake. As happy as--as poor servants not knowing where their morrow’s bread lay. Blessed--blessed--blessed hope, which paints that same to-morrow so gaudily that we have not much grief for our rags and crusts of to-day. And the morrow is to-day, and the morrow yet again, and still we hope on, hope ever. Faith, I would sooner be Tom Tumbler at the next show, with the “hope” of getting on Drury Lane boards, than the richest and handsomest peer in England, if he has no aspirations whatever.

These poor servants were going to the statute fair, to get hired, if they could; to hope for hiring if they could not; and, as they went on, they sang merry songs.

Oh! the sudden thought struck her. There was not a poor servant wench but wished to be a lady; why should not a lady wish to be a servant wench? ’Tis but the law of reciprocity.

The very thought made her more joyful, or rather, less dismal than she had been for some time. A moment more, as her natural good-temper came back, and she had decided. Yes, she would dress in that peasant masquerade dress of hers; and she would be--Martha; and Nancy should be--Nancy. And--and would not his lordship join them? Of course his lordship would. His lordship should be--John!

His lordship used plainer language than he had ever before used; his lordship, in a word, declined flatly; but ah! love will lead self-satisfied old-young men the queerest of dances; so, it is but just old parties should go through their little hops and jigs, and puff and blow all the way through the pretty little pas.

So let us just imagine Martha, Nancy, and John, making for the fair; Martha laughing as she has not laughed for years, Nancy playing a polite, impertinent second, and John doing his very best to be gay and happy. Poor fellow!