Yet Mistress Clio
(with whom, some say, Mistress Thalia, that sweet hoyden) brewed it:
she, not I, who do but hand the cup round by her warrant and good
favour. Her guests, not mine, you shall take it or leave it--spill it
untasted or quaff a bellyful. Of a hospitable temper, she whose page
I am; but a great lady, over self-sure to be dudgeoned by wry faces in
the refectory. As for the little sister (if she did have finger in the
concoction)--no fear of offence there! I dare vow, who know somewhat
the fashion of her, she will but trill a pretty titter or so at your
qualms._
BENEDICTUS BENEDICAT.
I cry you mercy for a lacuna at the outset. I know not what had
knitted and blackened the brows of certain two speeding eastward
through London, enhansomed, on the night of the feast of St. Box:
_alter_, Geoffrey Dizzard, called "The Honourable," _lieu-tenant_ in
the Guards of Edward the Peace Getter; _altera_, the Lady Angelica
Plantagenet, to him affianced. Devil take the cause of the bicker:
enough that they were at sulks. Here's for a sight of the girl!
Johannes Sargent, that swift giant from the New World, had already
flung her on canvas, with a brace of sisters. She outstands there, a
virgin poplar-tall; hair like ravelled flax and coiffed in the fashion
of the period; neck like a giraffe's; lips shaped for kissing rather
than smiling; eyes like a giraffe's again; breasts like a boy's, and
something of a dressed-up boy in the total aspect of her.
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