“Are you long from Scotland, sir?” asked Dr. Woodford, by way of preventing personalities.

“Oh ay, sir; these six months and more.  There’s not much more sport to be had since the fools of Cameronians have been pretty well got under, and ’tis no loss to be at Hounslow.”

“And oh, what a fright!” exclaimed Mrs. Archfield, catching sight of the heiress.  “Keep her away!  She makes me ill.”

They were glad to divert her attention to feeding the elephant, and she was coquetting a little about making up her mind to approach even the defunct tiger, while she insisted on having the number of his victims counted over to her.  Anne asked for Lucy, to whom she wanted to show the pigeons, but was answered that, “my lady wanted Lucy at home over some matter of jellies and blancmanges.”

Charles shrugged his shoulders a little and Sedley grumbled to Anne.  “The little vixen sets her heart on cates that she won’t lay a finger to make, and poor Lucy is like to be no better than a cook-maid, while they won’t cross her, for fear of her tantrums.”

At that instant piercing screams, shriek upon shriek, rang through the court, and turning hastily round, Anne beheld a little monkey perched on Mrs. Archfield’s head, having apparently leapt thither from the pole to which it was chained.

The keeper was not in sight, being in fact employed over a sale of some commodities within.  There was a general springing to the rescue.  Charles tried to take the creature off, Sedley tugged at the chain fastened to a belt round its body, but the monkey held tight by the curls on the lady’s forehead with its hands, and crossed its legs round her neck, clasping the hands so that the effect of the attempts of her husband and his cousin was only to throttle her, so that she could no longer scream and was almost in a fit, when on Peregrine holding out a nut and speaking coaxingly in Dutch, the monkey unloosed its hold, and with another bound was on his arm.  He stood caressing and feeding it, talking to it in the same tongue, while it made little squeaks and chatterings, evidently delighted, though its mournful old man’s visage still had the same piteous expression.  There was something most grotesque and almost weird in the sight of Peregrine’s queer figure toying with its odd hands which seemed to be in black gloves, and the strange language he talked to it added to the uncanny effect.  Even the Doctor felt it as he stood watching, and would have muttered ’Birds of a feather,’ but that the words were spoken more gruffly and plainly by Sedley Archfield, who said something about the Devil and his dam, which the good Doctor did not choose to hear, and only said to Peregrine, “You know how to deal with the jackanapes.”

“I have seen some at Leyden, sir.  This is a pretty little beast.”

Pretty!  There was a recoil in horror, for the creature looked to the crowd demoniacal.  Something the same was the sensation of Charles, who, assisted by Anne and Martha, had been rather carrying than leading his wife into the inn parlour, where she immediately had a fit of hysterics—­vapours, as they called it—­bringing all the women of the inn about her, while Martha and Anne soothed her as best they could, and he was reduced to helplessly leaning out at the bay window.