Conversation became general, and food was found or made for laughter.

When the twelve fiddlers who succeeded the blacksmith and the miller came trooping upon the green, they played, one by one, to perhaps as light-hearted a company as a May Day ever shone upon.

All their tunes were gay and lively ones, and the younger men moved their feet to the music, while a Strephon at the lower end of the lists seized upon a blooming Chloe, and the two began to dance "as if," quoth the Colonel, "the musicians were so many tarantula doctors." A flower-wreathed instrument of his calling went to the player of the sprightliest air; after which awardment, the fiddlers, each to the tune of his own choosing, marched off the green to make room for Pretty Bessee, her father the beggar, and her suitors the innkeeper, the merchant, the gentleman, and the knight.
The high, quick notes of the song suited the sunshiny weather, the sheen of the river, the azure skies.

A light wind brought from the orchard a vagrant troop of pink and white petals to camp upon the silken sleeve of Mistress Evelyn Byrd.

The gentleman sitting beside her gathered them up and gave them again to the breeze.
"It sounds sweetly enough," he said, "but terribly old-fashioned:-- 'I weigh not true love by the weight of the purse, And beauty is beauty in every degree.' That's not Court doctrine." The lady to whom he spoke rested her cheek upon her hand, and looked past the singers to the blossoming slope and the sky above.