Vesta had been sitting half an hour beside her unconscious husband, listening to his broken speech, and thinking upon the rapidity of events once started on their course, like eaglets scarcely taught to fly before they attack and kill, when the sound of carriage-wheels, arrested at the door, called her to the window, and Tom, the mocking-bird, which had been comparatively quiet since he found his master snugly cared for, now began to hop about, fly in the air, and sing again:
"Sweet--sweet--sweetie! come see! come see!"
Vesta saw Meshach's wiry, deliberate colored man step down and turn the horses' heads, and there dropped from the carriage, without using the carriage-step, at a leap and a skip, a young female object whose head was invisible in an enormous coal-scuttle bonnet of figured blue chintz. However quick she executed the leap, Vesta observed that the arrival had forgotten to put on her stockings.
Before Vesta could turn from the window this singular object had darted up the dark stairs of the old storehouse and thrown herself on the delirious man's bed:
"Uncle, Uncle Meshach! air you dead, uncle? Wake up and kiss your Rhudy!"
She had kissed her uncle plentifully while awaiting the same of him, and the attack a little excited him, without recalling his mind to any sustained remembrance, though Vesta heard the words "dear child," before he turned his head and chased the wild poppies again. Then the young female, ejaculating,
"Lord sakes! Uncle don't know his Rhudy!" pulled her black apron over her head and had a silent cry--a little convulsion of the neck and not an audible sigh besides.
"She weeps with some refinement," Vesta thought; and also observed that the visitor was a tall, long-fingered, rather sightly girl of, probably, seventeen, with clothing the mantuamaker was guiltless of, and a hoop bonnet, such as old people continued to make in remembrance of the high-decked vessels which had brought the last styles to them when their ancestors emigrated with their all, and forever, from a land of modes. The bonnet was a remarkable object to Vesta, though she had seen some such at a distance, coining in upon the heads of the forest people to the Methodist church. It resembled the high-pooped ship of Columbus, which he had built so high on purpose, the girls at the seminary said, so as to have the advantage of spying the New World first; but it also resembled the long, hollow, bow-shaped Conestoga wagons of which Vesta had seen so many going past her boarding-school at Ellicott's Mills before the late new railroad had quite reached there. As she had often peered into those vast, blue-bodied wagons to see what creatures might be passengers in their depths, so she took the first opportunity of the blue scuttle being jolted up by the mourner to discern the face within.
It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also mischievous brown eyes, set in the attitude of wonder the moment they observed another woman in the room. The skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long, like Milburn's, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and form of the face longish, and with something fine amid the wild, cow-like stare she fixed on Vesta, exclaiming, in a whisper,
"Lord sakes! a lady's yer!"
Then she threw her apron over the Conestoga bonnet again, and held it up there with her long fingers, and long, plump, weather-stained wrists.
Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amusement she had felt since the morning she and her mother laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as they looked down from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already her husband. That morning seemed a year ago; it was but yesterday.
"Old hats and bonnets," Vesta thought, "will be no novelties to me by and by. This family of the Milburns is full of them."
Then, addressing the new arrival, Vesta said,
"This is your uncle, then? Where do you live?"
"I live at Nu Ark," answered the miss, taking down the black apron and looking from the depths of the bonnet, like a guinea-pig from his hole.
"If she had said 'the Ark' without the 'New,'" Vesta thought, "it would have seemed natural."
"Your uncle has a high fever," Vesta said, kindly; "he is not in danger, we think. It was right of you to come, however. Now take off your bonnet. What is your name?"
"Rhudy--I'm Rhudy Hullin, ma'am."
"Rhoda--Rhoda Holland, I think you say."
"Yes'm, Rhudy Hullin. I live crost the Pookamuke, on the Oushin side, out thar by Sinepuxin. I don't live in a great big town like Princess Anne; I live in Nu Ark."
At this the girl carefully extricated her head from the Conestoga scuttle, looked all over the bonnet with pride and anxiety, and then carefully laid it on the top of her uncle's hat-box.
"Uncle Meshach give it to me," she said, with a sly inclination towards the sick bed. "Misc Somers made it. Uncle, he bought all the stuff; Misc Somers draw'd it. Did you ever see anything like it?"
"Never," said Vesta.
"Well, some folks out Sinepuxin said it was a sin and a shame--sech extravagins; but Misc Somers she said Uncle Meshach was rich an' hadn't but one Rhudy. It ain't quite as big as Misc Somers's bonnet, but it's draw'd mour."
Here Rhoda gave a repetition of what Vesta had twice before observed--an inaudible sniffle, and, being caught in it, wiped her nose on her apron.
"Take my handkerchief," Vesta said, "you are cold," and passed over her cambric with a lace border.
"What's it fur?" Rhoda asked, looking at it superstitiously. "You don't wipe your nuse on it, do you? Lord sakes! ain't it a piece of your neck fixin'?"
Vesta felt in a good humor to see this weed of nature turn the handkerchief over and hold it by the thumb and finger, as if she might become accountable for anything that might happen to it.
"I got two of these yer," she said; "Misc Somers made 'em outen a frock. They ain't got this starch on 'em; they're great big things. I always forgit 'em. My nuse wipes itself."
"Now come near the fire and warm your feet," said Vesta; "for your ride from the oceanside, this cold morning, through the forests of the Pocomoke, must have chilled you through. Lay off your blanket shawl."
Rhoda laid the huge black and green shawl, that reached to her feet, on the green chest, and smoothed it with evident pride.
"Uncle Meshach bought that in Wilminton," she said; "ain't it beautiful! I never wear it but when I come over yer or go to Snow Hill. Snow Hill's sech a proud place!"
She had a way of laughing, by merely indenting her cheeks, without a sound, just as she expressed the sense of pain; the only difference being in the beaming of her eyes; and Vesta thought it had something contagious in it. She would laugh broadly and in silence, as if she had been put on behavior in church, and there had adopted a grimace to make the other girls laugh and save herself the suspicion.
As she pulled her skirts down to her feet, Vesta's observation was confirmed that Rhoda had no stockings on, and she could not help exclaiming,
"My dear child, what possessed you to ride this October morning only half dressed? You might catch your death."
Rhoda caught her nose on the half sniffle, raised and dimpled her cheeks in a sly laugh, and cried,
"Lord sakes! you mean my legs? Why, I ain't got but two pairs of stockings, an' Misc Somers is a wearin' one of' em, and the ould pair's in the wash. It's so tejus to knit stockings, and sech fun to go barefoot, that I don't wear' em unless Misc Somers finds it out. Why, the boys can't see me!"
She grimaced again so naturally and engagingly that Vesta had to laugh quite aloud, and saw meantime that the young woman's oft-cobbled shoes covered a slender foot a lady might have envied.
"Now, Rhoda," Vesta said, almost indignantly, "why did you not ask your wealthy uncle for some good yarn stockings?"
"Him? Why, ma'am, he's got so many pore kin, if he begin to give' em all stockings, he'd go barefoot himself."
"Has he other nieces like you?"
"No." The girl quietly grimaced, with her brown eyes full of laughter. "There's plenty of others, but none like Rhudy; the woods is full of them others."
"So you are the favorite? Now, what was your uncle going to do with all his money?"
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said; "he was going to marry Miss Vesty with it. That's what Misc Somers said."
The mocking-bird had been striking up once or twice in the conversation, and now pealed his note loud:
"Vesta, she! she! she! she-ee-ee!"
A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than once already, in her brief knowledge of this forest family, went through Vesta's veins and nerves, and she silently remarked,
"How little a young girl knows of men around her--what satyrs are taking her image to their arms! These people knew he loved me, when I knew not that he ever saw me."
She addressed the niece again:
"Rhoda, did your uncle say he loved Miss Vesta?"
"No'm. He never said he luved nothing; but I heard Tom, the mocking-bird, shout 'Vesty,' and saw a lady's picture yonder between grandpar and grandmem, and told Misc Somers, and she says, 'Your Uncle Meshach's in luve!' Oh, I was right glad of it, because he was so sad and lonesome!"
The fountain of sympathy burst up again in Vesta's heart, and she felt that there were compensations riches and station knew not of in humble alliances like hers.
"Rhoda," she said, going to the young girl and putting her hand upon her soft brown hair, "you have not noticed the new picture of a lady hanging up here, have you?"
"No'm, not yet. Everything is so quare in this room sence I saw it last, I hain't seen nothin' in it but you. Now I see the carpet, an' the brass andirons, an' the chiney, an'--Lord sakes! is that a picture? Why, I thought it was you."
"It is, Rhoda. I am Vesta; I am your new aunt."
The girl made one of her engaging, dimpled, silent laughs, as if by stealth again, changed it into a silent cry by a revulsion as natural, and rose to her feet and took Vesta in her arms.
"I'm so glad, I will cry a little," Rhoda simpered, her eyes all dewy; "oh, how Misc Somers will say, 'I found it out first!'"
Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as if he had his own thoughts:
"Sweety! sweety! sweet! Vesty, see! see! see!"
Vesta felt a chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, which she expressed as frankly as the girl of forest product had spoken, that she might not retard the welcome of these homely friendships:
"Yes, Rhoda, I am thankful to find a social life open to me where there seemed no way, and brooks and playmates where everything looked dry. You come here like a sunbeam, God bless you! I can hear you talk, and teach you what little I know, and we will relieve each other, watching him."
She felt a slight modification of her joy at this reminder, but the bird seemed to teach her patience, as he suggested, hopping and flying in the air,
"Come see! come see! come see!"
"Yes," thought Vesta, "come and see! It is good counsel. I begin to feel the breaking of a new sense,--curiosity about the poor and lowly. My education seems to have closed my observation on people of my own race, who daily trode almost upon my skirts, and whom I never saw--whom it was considered respectable not to see--while even my colored servants enjoyed my whole confidence because they were my slaves. Yet, in misfortune, to these plain white people I must have dropped; and then Roxy and Virgie, sold to some temporary rich man, would have been above me, slaves as they would continue! How false, how fatal, both slavery and proud riches to the republicans we pretend to be! Compelled 'to see' at last, I shall not close my eyes nor harden my heart."
The maid from Newark had meantime quietly inspected the rag carpet, the cloth hangings, the fairy rocker, and all the acquisitions of her uncle's abode, and Vesta again observed that she was of slender and willowy shape and motion, unaffected in anything, not forward nor excited, and with the shrewd look so near ready wit that she could make Vesta laugh almost at will. Vesta showed her how to administer cool drink and the sponging to the sufferer, and he saw them together with a look of inquiry which the febrile action soon drove away.
"Are your parents living, Rhoda?"
"No'm; they're both dead. My mother was Uncle Meshach's sister, and she married a rich man, who biled salt and had vessels an' kept tavern. Father Hullin died of the pilmonary; mar died next. Misc Somers brought me up whar the tavern used to be. It ain't a stand no more. Uncle Meshach owns it."
"Is it a nice place?"
"Now it ain't as nice as it use to be, Aunt Vesty"--the girl glided easily over what Vesta thought might be a hard word--"sence the shews don't stop thar no mour."
"The shoes? What is that?"
"The wax figgers and glass-blowers, and the strongis' man in the world. Did you ever see him?"
Vesta said, "No, dear."
"I saw him," Rhoda said, with a compression of her mouth and a gleam of her eyes. "He bruke a stone with his fist and Misc Somers kep the stone, and what do you think it was?"
"Marble?"
"No'm; chork! He jest washed the chork over with a little shell or varnish or something, and, of course, it bruke right easy; so he wasn't the strongest man in the world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see him, she'll tell him so."
"Is it a little or a large house, Rhoda?"
"Oh, it's a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with the roof bent like an elefin's back, an' three windows in it--rale dormant windows, that looks like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows of windows high, and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit to be a rueyal palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on to it. It's the biggest house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. That rope-walker's a mountin-bank."
"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank--an impostor?"
"Yes'm,"--the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'd break the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretched tight enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found out every time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin' else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's going to tell him, if he comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! she ain't afraid."
"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no more jugglers?"
"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and the missionary. The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat no more; but he tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a pony outen the stables an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned out to be some shingle sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers is a-waitin' for him. Lord sakes! she don't keer."
"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-house at Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"
"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live together sence par and mar died of the pilmonary. Oh, I have a passel of beaus that takes me over to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way of the skeeters, an' thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and roasts mammynoes. Aunt Vesty, I can cut out most any girl from her beau; but, Lord sakes! I ain't found no man I love yet."
"I'm glad of that," said Vesta, "because you will then be satisfied with Princess Anne. They say your uncle will be sick here several weeks, and we can help each other to make him well. Now he is waking."
Milburn opened his eyes and sighed, and saw them together, and Rhoda held back considerately while the young wife approached the bed. He looked at her with a bewildered doubt.
"I thought they said you had gone forever," he murmured.
"No, I am come forever, or until you wish me gone."
"I told them so," he sighed; "I said, 'She has high principle, though she can't love me.'"
"Uncle Meshach, give Auntie time!" cried Rhoda, with a quick divination of something unsettled or misunderstood. "Don't you know your Rhudy? Even I was afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was the pilmonary and nursed me."
"You have a good niece," Vesta said, as her husband kissed the stranger; "and we shall love each other, I hope, and improve each other."
"Yes, that will be noble," he replied. "Teach her something; I have never had the time. Oh, I am very ill; at a time like this, too!"
"Be composed, Mr. Milburn," the bride said; "it is only Nature taking the time you would not give her, and which she means for us to improve our almost violent acquaintance. I shall be very happy sitting here, and wish you would let your niece be with me; I desire it."
He tried to smile, though the strong sweat succeeding the fever broke upon him from his hands to his face.
"She is yours," he said; "the best of my poor kin. Do not despise us!"
Vesta drew her arm around Rhoda and kissed her, that he might see it.
"What goodness!" he sighed, and the opening of his pores, as it let the fever escape, gave him a feeling of drowsy relief which Vesta understood.
"Now let us turn the covers under the edges, Rhoda," she said, "and put your blanket-shawl over him, and he will get some natural sleep."
He turned once, as if to see if she was there, and closed his eyes peacefully as a child.
"Now, Rhoda," said Vesta, in a few minutes, "I hear papa's carriage at the door, and, while he comes up, I shall ride back to see my mother and get a few things at home."
"Who is your poppy, Aunt Vesty?"
"Don't you know him?--Judge Custis, who lives in Princess Anne."
"Jedge Custis! Why, Lord sakes! he ain't your par, is he? Aunt Vesty, he's one of my old beaus."
The Judge brought with him Reverend William Tilghman, and Vesta, as she was retiring, introduced Rhoda to both of them:
"This is Miss Rhoda--Mr. Milburn's niece."
Judge Custis, a trifle blushing, took both of Rhoda's hands:
"Ha, my pretty partner and dancing pupil! How are our friends at St. Martin's Bay and Sinepuxent? Many a sail and clam-bake we have had, Rhoda."
"You're a deceiver," Rhoda cried, with a dimpling somewhere between glee and accusation. "I'm goin' to plosecute you, Jedge, fur not tellin' of me you was a married man. My heart's bruke."
"Who could remember what he was, Rhoda, sitting all that evening beside you at--where was it?"
"The Blohemian glass-blowers," Rhoda cried; "the only ones that ever visited the Western Himisfure. Jedge," with sudden impetuosity, "that little one, with the copper rings in his years, wasn't a Blohemian at all. He lived up at Cape Hinlupen, an' Misc Somers see him thar when she was a buyin' of herring thar. She's goin' to tell him, when she catches him at Nu-ark."
The young rector observed the flash of those bright eyes following the pleasing dimples, and the slips of orthography seemed to him never less culpable coming from such lips and teeth.
"William," said Vesta, "come around this afternoon, and let us have our usual Sunday reading-circle. Mr. Milburn will be awake and appreciate it, as he is one of your most regular parishioners. Rhoda, you can read?"
"Oh, yes'm. Misc Somers, she's a good reader. She reads the Old Testamins. The names thar is mos' too long for me, but I reads the Psalms an' the Ploverbs right well."
"Very well, then, we will read verse about, so that Mr. Milburn can hear both our voices and his favorite minister's, too. You'll come, papa?"
"Yes, if I can. We have had a love-feast at Teackle Hall this morning, and your sister from Talbot is down, but I think I can get off."
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said, looking at Mr. Tilghman candidly; "you ain't a minister now? Not a minister of the Gospil?"
"Unworthily so, Miss Rhoda."
"Well, I don't see how you was old enough to be convicted and learn it all, unless you was a speretual merikle. Misc Somers see one of 'em at Jinkotig. They called him the enfant phrenomeny. He exhorted at five year old, and at seven give his experyins."
"Rare, Miss Rhoda," the rector said, hardly able to keep his reverence in amusement at her impetuosity.
"Oh, he made a wild excitemins, Aunt Vesty. The women give each other their babies to hold while they tuk turns a-shouting. 'Yer, Becky, hold my baby while I shout!' says one. 'Now, Nancy, hold mine while I shout!' To see that little boy up thar tellin' of his experyins was meriklus, an' made an excitemins like the high tides on Jinkotig that drowns' em out. But, Aunt Vesty, that little phrenomeny was a dwarf, twenty year old, an' Misc Somers found it out and told about it."
"I'll be bound Mrs. Somers knows!" exclaimed the Judge.
"That she do," continued Rhoda, earnestly, with a slight sniffle of a well-modelled nose and a dimpling that argued to Vesta something to come. "Misc Somers says you held one of them babies, Jedge, to let its mother shout, and pretended to be under a conviction; an' that you backslid right thar and was a-whisperin' to the other mother. Lord sakes! Misc Somers finds it all out."
"Well," said the Judge, finding the laugh against him, "I never did better electioneering than that day. By holding that baby five minutes I made a vote, and the mother will hold it twenty years before she will make a vote."
"Misc Somers says, Jedge, you hold the women longer than thar babies; but I told her you was in sech conviction you didn't know one from the other. 'Oh,' she says, 'he's sly and safe when he gits over yer on the Worcester side.' Misc Somers, she's dreadful plain."
William Tilghman, during the continuation of this colloquy, looked with interest on the two young ladies: Vesta, the elder by two or three years, and richly endowed with the lights of both beauty and accomplishments; the maid from the ocean side, plainer, and with no ornament within or without; but he could foresee, under Vesta's fostering, a graceful woman, with coquetry and fascination not wholly latent there; and, as his eyes met Rhoda's, he interpreted the look that at a certain time of life almost every maiden casts on meeting a young man--"Is he single?" She shot this look so archly, yet so strong, that the arrow wounded him a very little as it glanced off. He smiled, but the consciousness was restored a moment that he was a young man still, as well as a priest. Love, which had closed a door like the portal of a tomb against him, began to come forth like a glow-worm and wink its lamp athwart the dark.
"She must come to Sunday-school," he thought, "if she stays in Princess Anne. We will polish her."
The mocking-bird, not being satisfied with any lull in the conversation, "pearted up," as he saw Vesta withdraw, and cried,
He flew in the air over his stirring master, as if doubting that all was well since the strange lady, who had been so quiet all the morning, was gone.
"That bird almost speaks," said William Tilghman; "I have spent many an hour teaching them, but never could make one talk like that."
"Maybe you had too much to teach to it," Rhoda Holland said; "it ain't often they can speak, and they mustn't have much company to learn well. Uncle Meshach haint had no company but that bird for years. I reckon the bird got mad and lonesome, and jest hooted words at him."
"What is it saying now?" Tilghman asked. "See! it is almost convulsive in its attempts to say something."
The gray bird, as impressive as a poor poet, seemed nearly in a state of epilepsy to bring up some burden of oppressive sound, and, as they watched it, almost tipsy with the intoxicant of speech, fluttering, driving, and striking in the air, it suddenly brought out a note liquid as gurgling snow from a bird-cote spout:
"L-l-lo-love! love! love! Ha! ha! L-l-love!"
"Well done, old bachelor!" Judge Custis remarked, in spite of his fagged face, for good resolution and yesterday's unbracing had left him somewhat limp and haggard still. "He brings out 'love' as if he had made a vow against it, but the confession had to come. Many a monk would sing the same if instinct could find a daring word in his chorals. These mockers of Maryland were celebrated in the British magazines a hundred years ago, and I recall some lines about them."
He then recited:
"'His breast whose plumes a cheerful white display,
His quivering wings are dressed in sober gray,
Sure all the Muses this their bird inspire,
And he alone is equal to a choir.
Oh, sweet musician! thou dost far excel
The soothing song of pleasing Philomel:
Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined,
But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind!
Runs thro' all notes: thou only know'st them all,
At once the copy and th' original!'"
"That's magnificins!" Rhoda exclaimed, with quiet delight; "who is 'fellow Mil,' Jedge?"
"Oh, that's the British nightingale. These American mocking-birds surpass them as one of our Eastern Shore clippers outsails all the naval powers of Europe."
"I've hearn 'The British Nightingale,'" Rhoda said, with a flash of her eyes; "he was a blind man with green specticklers that sang at Nu-ark, ''ome, sweet 'ome'--that's the way he plonounced it--an' it affected of him so, he had to drink a whole tumbler of water, an' Misc Somers, spying around to see if he was the rale nightingale, she found it was gin in that glass, and told about it."
Rhoda made even the minister laugh, as she indented her cheeks and cast a sheep's glance at him and the Judge. He marvelled that such forest English could be resented so little by his mind, but he thought,
"Never mind, she may have had no more lessons than the bird, whose difficulty is even beautiful. But see! Mr. Milburn is wide awake. My friend, how do you feel?"
"Better, better!" murmured Milburn. "I cannot lie here any more. There is money, money, gentlemen, dependent on my getting about."
He started up with the greatest resolution and confidence, and fell upon his head before he had left the coverlets.
"No, no!" said the Judge, as he and Tilghman picked Milburn up and arranged him as before. "Your will is matched this time, my brave son-in-law! You are back in the hut you have consumed, among the fires thereof, and the avenging blast of Nassawongo furnace burns in your veins and cools you in the mill-pond alternately. Lie there and repent for the injury you have done a spotless one!"
If Meshach heard this it was never known, but the unconscious or impulsive utterance strengthened the impression with Tilghman and Rhoda that Vesta's marriage was not altogether voluntary, and produced on both a feeling of deeper sympathy and respect for her.
"Judge," the young minister said, "do good for evil, if evil there has been! I have given him my hand sincerely; perhaps you can relieve his mind of some business care."
"Mr. Milburn," the Judge said, when he saw the resinous eyes roll towards him again out of that swarthy face, now pale with weakness, "I am out of a job now, and can work cheap. Let me do any errand for you."
A look of petulance, followed by one of inquiry, came up from Milburn's eyes, and he pressed his head between his wrists, as if to bring back the blood that might propel his judgment. They heard him mutter,
"No business prudence--yet plausible, persuasive--might do it well."
The Judge spoke now, with some firmness:
"Milburn, there is no use of your rebelling. Here you are and here you will lie till nature does her restoration, assisted by this medicine I have brought you. You must undergo calomel, and this quinine must set on its work of several weeks to break up the regularity of these chills. In the meantime, as your interests are also Vesta's, and Vesta's are mine, let me serve her, if not you."
The positive tone influenced the weakened system of the patient. He looked at all three of the observers, and said to Tilghman, "William, I might send you but for your calling; leave me with the Judge a little while, both you and Rhoda."
Rhoda took the Conestoga bonnet from the top of the Entailed Hat box, and arrayed herself in it, to the rector's exceeding wonder.
"Let's you and me go take a little walk," she said, putting her hand in his arm with a quiet confidence in which was a spark of Meshach's will. "I ain't afraid of Princess Anne people, if they are proud. Mise Somers says King Solomons was no better than a lily outen the pond, and said so himself."
The young man, sincere as his humility was, blushed a little at the idea of walking through his native town with that bonnet at his side, he being of one of the self-conscious, high-viewing families of the old peninsula--his grand-uncle the staff-officer of Washington, and messenger from Yorktown to Congress with the news, "Cornwallis has fallen;" but it was his chivalric sense, and not his piety, which immediately dispelled the last touch of coxcombry, when he felt that a lady had requested him.
"With happiness, Miss Holland;" and he did not feel one shrinking thought again as he ran the gantlet of the idle fellows of the town, many of them his former vagrant playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. He would have taken her to his grandmother's, with whom he kept house, but that aristocratic old dowager might say something, he considered, to destroy Rhoda's confidence in her elegant appearance and easy vocabulary; and they walked past Teackle Hall, where Vesta saw them, and opened the door and made them come in and eat a little. Rhoda at first showed some uneasiness under this great pile of habitation, but Vesta was so natural and gracious that the shyness wore off, and, at a fitting moment, the bride said:
"Rhoda, my dear, there is a bonnet up-stairs I expect to wear this winter, and I want to try it on you, whom I think it will particularly become."
Rhoda's quiet eyes flashed as she saw the new article and heard Vesta praise it, upon her head. The old bonnet had received a cruel blow, in spite of Mrs. Somers.
Tilghman, too, accused himself that he felt a little relieved when he escorted Rhoda back to Meshach's in another bonnet, and Vesta followed, with her great shaggy dog, Turk; she not unconscious--though serene and thoughtfully polite to all she knew--of people peering at her in wonder and excitement from every door and window of the town. The news was working in every household, from the servants in the kitchens to the aged people helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the famed daughter of Daniel Custis was the prize of the junk dealer and usurer in "old town" by the bridge, who had enslaved a wife at last.
