Deb brushed the last oak leaf from the skirt of her green gown, tossed her yellow hair out of her brown eyes, and scrambled up the steep side of the dell to a level of lawn and flowers.  Her handmaiden followed her, and they paused for breath beneath the white blooms of a mighty catalpa.  A hundred yards away, across an expanse of dewy turf, rose the great house, bathed in sunlight.  Box, syringa, and honeysuckle environed it, and a row of poplars made a background of living green.  It had tall white pillars, and shallow steps leading down to a gravelled drive.  The drive was over-arched by elm and locust, and between the trees was planted purple lilac.  All of fresh and fair and tender met in the late April weather, in the bright and song-filled morning, in the dew and in the flowers.  Upon the steps, between the white pillars, were gathered several muslined figures, flowery bright to match the morning.  In the drive below, two horsemen, booted and spurred, clad in many-caped riding-coats and attended by a negro groom, were in the act of lifting tall hats to the ladies of the house they were quitting.

“Hi!” panted Miranda.  “Marse Ludwell Cary, Marse Fairfax Cary, an’ dat brack niggah Eli!  Whar dey gwine dis mawnin’?”

“To the Court House—­to the election,” answered Deb.  “I know all about it, for I asked Uncle Edward.  If the Federalists win, the crops will be good, and General Washington and my father and my grandfather will lie quiet in their graves.  We are Federalists.  If the Republicans win, the country will go to the devil.”

“Hi, dat so?” said Miranda.  “Le’s run open de big gate.  Dey two gent’men moughty free wid dey money.”

Racing over the jewelled turf, mistress and maid arrived at the big gate in time to swing it open before the approaching riders.  Young Fairfax Cary laughed and tossed a coin to Miranda, who bobbed and showed her teeth, while his elder brother stooped gallantly to the pretty child of the house he was leaving.  “Do you know what you are like in your narrow green gown and your blowing, yellow hair?  You are like a daffodil in your sister’s garden.”

“If you were to swing me up from the ground,” said Deb meditatively, “I could stand upon the toe of your boot, and hold by Pluto’s mane, and ride with you as far as the creek.—­What flower is Jacqueline like?”

“Like no flower that blooms,” said Mr. Ludwell Cary.  “Ah, well sprung, Proserpina!  Now shall we go fast as the wind?”

They went fast as the wind to the creek, and then went like the wind back to the gate, where Ludwell Cary swung the child down to earth and the waiting Miranda.

Deb curtsied to him.  “Wish me good luck, Daffy-down-Dilly!” he said, with his charming smile.

“I do,” she answered earnestly.  “I hope that you will kill the Devil.”

He looked puzzled.  “Is that feasible?  I don’t know where to find him.”

“Aren’t you going to fight him at the Court House?  Uncle Edward said that you were going to put down Lucifer.”