own eyes. I turned away,
and then I perceived for the first time the tall form of my old friend,
Percy Singleton.

"May I, too, bid you welcome, Richard," said he, in his manly way; "and
rejoice that I have got such a neighbour?"

"Thank you, Percy," I answered. I was not in a state to say much more.

"And now," exclaims Patty, "what a dinner we shall have in the
prodigal's honour! I shall make you all some of the Naples biscuit Mrs.
Brice told me of."

She flew into the house, and presently we heard her clear voice singing
in the kitchen.

CHAPTER XLVI. GORDON'S 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 Jen