e?"

"In this house. In my care partly. She has two trustees, or guardians,
besides. One is your father's brother, James Henry, who lives not far
from Germantown. But I forget--you know nothing of our localities."

"An uncle! Really that had slipped my mind. And has he any family?"

"One son of his own. A youth and two girls, orphans, whose mother was
his wife's sister, have a home there. They are Friends of the quite
strict order."

"I must find them. My remembrance of him had faded, but I think I do
recall his coming in to dinner at my father's. So my little sister is
here? I have said the name over many times. Primrose. Is she as pleasing
as the name? If she favors her mother she must be pretty enough."

"She is very well looking," was the quiet answer.

"And somewhat of an heiress."

"No one can tell about property in such times as these. I am sorry thou
shouldst have been disappointed in this respect."

The young fellow shrugged his shoulders and smiled with a kind of gay
indifference.

"A young woman when Sir Wyndham was up at London captured him. He had
gone many a time and had his yearly carouse with no danger, but she made
him fast before he could fairly escape. She pays him much outward
devotion. There was a great family of girls and they were glad to get
homes, having little fortune, but being well connected. Then her child,
being a boy, knocked me out altogether; the estate and title going in
the male line. Still, he was generous to me. And being of a somewhat
adventurous disposition I thought to enlist in the King's Guard, but
there being a call for men to subdue the rebelling colonies, I decided
to come hither."

"Thy philosophic acceptance speaks well for thee. Few young men could
take a disappointment so calmly."

"I raved a little at first," laughingly. "But I was given a journey on
the Continent, and there are chances still. It is said old men's
children are seldom robust, while I can frolic for a week and remain
sound as a nut."

Now that she saw more of him he did resemble his father somewhat, though
not so tall and of a more slender build.

"Well," he said presently, veiling his impatience, "am I to see the
little girl?"

"Julius," to the hall boy, who was shooting up into a tall lad, "go
upstairs and ask Mistress Primrose to come down to me."

The child entered shyly, Julius having announced "two Britisher
redcoats" with bated breath and wide-open eyes. She walked swiftly to
Mad