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darling?” he said anxiously. “Thomas Fones is good to you?”
    “Oh yes, Father... He’s a fine man...”
    Adam nodded, satisfied at once, unwilling to have any disquiet spoil the satisfaction of his party. His family, dressed as richly as any gentry in the land, affirmed his prosperity, as did this great room glowing with tapestries, lit by a hundred candles, and the carved oak table with its bulbous legs, its beeswaxed board loaded already with punch bowls and cold pasties and flagons of nut-brown ale, while the servants scurried back and forth to the kitchen for fresh supplies. Four musicians were waiting too by the screen’ that led to the parlour - the fiddler, a gittern player, a piper, and a little drummer. Lucy was even prepared to play on the virginals, if the deVeres were inclined for singing. Nobody could deem the entertainment niggardly.
    “That’s a fair little wench you’ve got there, Anne,” said the old man, his complacent eye suddenly caught by Elizabeth, who was sitting sedately as near the fascinating drummer as she could get, and whispering to Jack. The younger children had been put to bed, and Elizabeth was very conscious of privilege and of her rustling green taffeta dress, edged with silver lace exactly like her mother’s. “ ‘Tis a pity she has the Winthrop nose,” the grandfather added, “a mite long for a girl - my old grandame always used to say the Devil tweaked the first Winthrop’s nose in passing one black night - but wi’ that mass o’ hair and those big eyes and cheeks like a blaze o’ poppies, she’ll win many a lad’s heart some day.”
    Anne smiled. “Bess loves Jack, child though she is.” She broke off. “Look at Harry!”
    Young Henry had been taking copious samples from the punch bowl, and was quite tipsy. He was also intoxicated by the occasion, and by a desire to impress Bess who was being dignified and as priggish as Aunt Lucy. Acting on wild impulse Harry had seized a handful of walnuts from the table and, swarming up the fireplace like a monkey, perched on the mantel, six feet above the hearth. There he crouched, teetering on the narrow ledge, his long bright curls too near the candles, and began to pelt his brother and Elizabeth with the nuts.
    “Come down, sir - “ shouted Adam, striding down the Hall. “Come down at once!” Harry, whose hair was beginning to singe, and who had begun to feel giddy, would have obeyed but the drop looked formidable from the top, and he swayed uncertainly.
    “He’ll fall...!” Lucy shrilled. But he did not. Jack acted with the speed and instant comprehension which were to be his all his life, and before their grandfather got there, he had pulled a stool to the hearth, got up on it and scooped his younger brother down. “You dunce,” he said good-humouredly, yet with an exasperation which was nearly adult “Why do you always have to play the fool?”
    Harry flushed, muttered something and glared at Elizabeth whom he obscurely blamed for all this, Adam strode up and dealt his grandson a resounding box on the ear, and there would have been other punishment except for the pounding of the great bronze doorknocker. The Waldegraves had arrived. Adam immediately forgot his grandson, who vanished to spend the next hour in the pantry sulkily filching comfits from the pastry table whenever the cook’s back was turned.
    Fortunately - since the food and wine could not be touched nor the musicians play until they came - Lord and Lady deVere were not tardy. They arrived in one of the new German coaches drawn by four horses, and their entrance into Groton Park was announced by a bugle strain from the outrider.
    The noble couple swept into the hall on a wave of musk and magnificence, dispensing gracious smiles and nods. Mistress Winthrop murmured apology for her condition while Anne and Lucy curtseyed low. Elizabeth, though nobody saw her, curtseyed too, and stared in admiration. She had seen fine folk pass on the London streets,