Definition of "peart"

There was a tricksie girle, I wot, // Albeit clad in gray, / As peart as bird, as straite as boult, // As fresh as flower in May.

1586, William Warner, Albion's England, Booke VI, Chapter XXXI, 1810, The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume IV, page 579

I smiled; and she went on to say I looked a little more peart; maybe I would not be such a slow coach after all.

1856, Alice Carey, Married, not Mated; Or, How they lived at Woodside and Throckmorton Hall, page 109

" […] No young man could 'a' ben more peart and alive than that, Dotty."

1893, Lynde Palmer, A Question of Honour, page 88

"Yore pa don't hold to card playin' but you needs to have quiet and rest. I'm pleased to see Annie's up to playin'. Baby looks a little more peart this mornin' too."

1979, Marguerite Noble, Filaree: A Novel of an American Life, published 1985, page 109