know your ladyship is a marquis's daughter, and I never can think of
taking precedence of you!" So fond did Madam become of her niece, that
she even allowed Hagan to read plays--my own humble compositions amongst
others--and was fairly forced to own that there was merit in the tragedy
of Pocahontas, which our parson delivered with uncommon energy and fire.

Hal and his wife came but rarely to Castlewood and Richmond when the
chaplain and his lady were with us. Fanny was very curt and rude with
Maria, used to giggle and laugh strangely in her company, and repeatedly
remind her of her age, to our mother's astonishment, who would
often ask, was there any cause of quarrel between her niece and her
daughter-in-law? I kept my own counsel on these occasions, and was often
not a little touched by the meekness with which the elder lady bore her
persecutions. Fanny loved to torture her in her husband's presence
(who, poor fellow, was also in happy ignorance about his wife's early
history), and the other bore her agony, wincing as little as might be. I
sometimes would remonstrate with Madam Harry, and ask her was she a Red
Indian, that she tortured her victims so? "Have not I had torture
enough in my time?" says the young lady, and looked as though she was
determined to pay back the injuries inflicted on her.

"Nay," says I, "you were bred in our wigwam, and I don't remember
anything but kindness!"

"Kindness!" cries she. "No slave was ever treated as I was. The blows
which wound most, often are those which never are aimed. The people who
hate us are not those we have injured."

I thought of little Fanny in our early days, silent, smiling, willing to
run and do all our biddings for us, and I grieved for my poor brother,
who had taken this sly creature into his bosom.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII. Yankee Doodle comes to Town

One of the uses to which we put America in the days of our British
dominion was to make it a refuge for our sinners. Besides convicts and
assigned servants whom we transported to our colonies, we discharged
on their shores scapegraces and younger sons, for whom dissipation,
despair, and bailiffs made the old country uninhabitable. And as Mr.
Cook, in his voyages, made his newly discovered islanders presents of
English animals (and other specimens of European civilisation), we used
to take care to send samples of our black sheep over to the colonies,
there to browse as best they might, and propagate their pre