staring at the Colonel
while we reasoned out all this matter of the beards and the wigs. Now
the Commodore, at a suggestion from Nautica's elbow, shifted to the
other foot and cleared his throat to say something. But what was there
to say? It is a little trying, this meeting people who cannot converse
intelligently upon anything that has happened since the seventeenth
century.

At last, we murmured something about Charles II; and, to make sure, let
the murmuring run over a little into the reigns of James II and of
William and Mary, and then passed on; though the Commodore felt there
should have been at least some slight allusion to the pyramids and the
cave-dwellers.

We must have taken very slowly the few steps that carried us to the
next member of the receiving party; for in that time the world moved on
a generation, and we found ourselves paying respects to no less a
personage than "King" Carter himself. Too modest to suppose that he had
come over from Corotoman on our account, we strongly suspected that the
matter of alliance between the families of Hill and of Carter was in
the air; which would account for the presence of the potentate of the
Rappahannock.

He looked very imposing in his velvets and his elaborate, powdered
periwig, standing ceremoniously, one hand thrust within his rich,
half-open waistcoat.

Now was the time for all that we knew about Queen Anne and King George
the First, and about the recent removal of the colonial capital from
James Towne to Williamsburg.

The next dignitaries were very near; but again it took a generation to
get to them, the names being John Carter (usually called Secretary
Carter from his important colonial office) and Elizabeth Hill Carter,
his wife. These were the young people who united the houses of Shirley
and Corotoman. So, even yet, we had got down only to the days of George
the Second.

Secretary and Mrs. Carter were a handsome pair; she, fair and girlish,
with an armful of roses; he, dark and courtly and one of the most
attractive looking figures we had met in our travels in Colonial-land.
These people could not tell us much about the old manor-house; for,
while possessing two of the finest plantations in the colonies, Shirley
and Corotoman, they made their home chiefly at Williamsburg.

However, they were especially interesting people to meet because of
their familiarity with the first half of the eighteenth century, that
brightest and most prosperous perio