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It was a good while ago that the events out of which this story was woven transpired.

Now, at different seasons of the year, these families, with two gray-haired old ladies and a gray-haired old man with a sailor’s rolling walk, may be seen, sometimes in London, sometimes on a fair estate in Devonshire, sometimes in a stately home in the Miami Valley, and again down on the Brazos in Texas.

Around and among them are playing broods of little Jacks, Jims, Toms, Roses, Graces, and Margarets, and older children are away at school.  All the children call the old ladies “Grandma” and the gray man with the sailor’s walk “Grand-uncle,” and all who see them declare that no other such a happy company can be found in all the world.

The place on the Brazos is superintended by a shrewd Irishman, while the village physician, formerly a ship surgeon, is named Craig, and his wife’s name is Nora; and the people there say there is not in all Texas another woman who is more of a lady or has a complexion so clear, a face so fair, or such a wealth of hair, which in color is between flaxen and gold.