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"It'll gather on your gowns and draggle 'em. That ought to move you if obedience won't. Eh, Bess—hast thy gallant here?"

"No, Father. Ned has ridden over to Ashford to see the fighting cocks. The gentlemen here are Monsieur de Champfort and Monsieur de Périgault."

"What, the old fellows?"

"No—Monsieur Eustache and Monsieur Gilles."

"And have they taught thee any French?"

"They've been teaching us all French. That's why we were laughing so."

"Aye, hussy—laugh at the language of thy father's exile; and learn it from thy gallants since thou wouldst never learn it from thine aunt."

"I'd have willingly learned it from my aunt if she hadn't mocked me."

"So it was she who laughed instead of thee and thou'dst sooner do the laughing thyself. Well, well. And here come the young fellows. Bon soir, messieurs."

"Bon soir, Monsieur le Pasteur . . . Bon soir."

The young French gentlemen bowed low and swept the ground with their plumed hats. They were very different from the common run of Huguenot immigrants, from the families, mostly of the trading class—cloth-workers, weavers and iron smelters—that had been dribbling into the country for the last hundred and fifty years. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes had brought a new type of refugee—ancient families from the south and south-west of France, impoverished but noble, not bred to any trade save war. One or two of these had settled in the neighbourhood of Leasan, living frugally in small houses, but none the less maintaining a civilization that the English-born gentry had never known.