PRIDE

The years of a man's life that count the most are often those which may
be passed quickest in the story of it. And so I may hurry over the first
years I spent as Mr. Swain's factor at Gordon's Pride. The task that
came to my hand was heaven-sent.

That manor-house, I am sure, was the tidiest in all Maryland, thanks to
Patty's New England blood. She was astir with the birds of a morning,
and near the last to retire at night, and happy as the days were long.
She was ever up to her elbows in some dish, and her butter and her
biscuits were the best in the province. Little she cared to work
samplers, or peacocks in pretty wools, tho' in some way she found the
time to learn the spinet. As the troubles with the mother country
thickened, she took to a foot-wheel, and often in the crisp autumn
evenings I would hear the bumping of it as I walked to the house, and
turn the knob to come upon her spinning by the twilight. She would have
no English-made linen in that household. "If mine scratch your back,
Richard," she would say, "you must grin and bear, and console yourself
with your virtue." It was I saw to the flax, and learned from Ivie
Rawlinson (who had come to us from Carvel Hall) the best manner to ripple
and break and swingle it. And Mr. Swain, in imitation of the high
example set by Mr. Bordley, had buildings put up for wheels and the
looms, and in due time kept his own sheep.

If man or woman, white or black, fell sick on the place, it was Patty
herself who tended them. She knew the virtue of every herb in the big
chest in the storeroom. And at table she presided over her father's
guests with a womanliness that won her more admiration than mine. Now
that the barrister was become a man of weight, the house was as crowded
as ever was Carvel Hall. Carrolls and Pacas and Dulanys and Johnsons,
and Lloyds and Bordleys and Brices and Scotts and Jennings and Ridouts,
and Colonel Sharpe, who remained in the province, and many more families
of prominence which I have not space to mention, all came to Gordon's
Pride. Some of these, as their names proclaim, were of the King's side;
but the bulk of Mr. Swain's company were stanch patriots, and toasted
Miss Patty instead of his Majesty. By this I do not mean that they
lacked loyalty, for it is a matter of note that our colony loved King
George.

I must not omit from the list above the name of my good friend, Captain
Clapsaddle.

Nor was there lack of younger company. Betty