And it ends as it ever will end, be the children young or old, for the French pass from his Majesty’s mind and he runs after his consort to implore forgiveness, leaving poor Jonas to take care of the Conqueror.

How short those summer days?  All too short for the girl and boy who had so much to do in them.  The sun rising over the forest often found us peeping through the blinds, and when he sank into the bay at night we were still running, tired but happy, and begging patient Hester for half an hour more.

“Lawd, Marse Dick,” I can hear her say, “you an’ Miss Dolly’s been on yo’ feet since de dawn.  And so’s I, honey.”

And so we had.  We would spend whole days on the wharves, all bustle and excitement, sometimes seated on the capstan of the Sprightly Bess or perched in the nettings of the Oriole, of which ship old Stanwix was now captain.  He had grown gray in Mr. Carvel’s service, and good Mrs. Stanwix was long since dead.  Often we would mount together on the little horse Captain Daniel had given me, Dorothy on a pillion behind, to go with my grandfather to inspect the farm.  Mr. Starkie, the overseer, would ride beside us, his fowling-piece slung over his shoulder and his holster on his hip; a kind man and capable, and unlike Mr. Evans, my Uncle Grafton’s overseer, was seldom known to use his firearms or the rawhide slung across his saddle.  The negroes in their linsey-woolsey jackets and checked trousers would stand among the hills grinning at us children as we passed; and there was not one of them, nor of the white servants for that matter, that I could not call by name.

And all this time I was busily wooing Mistress Dolly; but she, little minx, would give me no satisfaction.  I see her standing among the strawberries, her black hair waving in the wind, and her red lips redder still from the stain.  And the sound of her childish voice comes back to me now after all these years.  And this was my first proposal: 

“Dorothy, when you grow up and I grow up, you will marry me, and I shall give you all these strawberries.”

“I will marry none but a soldier,” says she, “and a great man.”

“Then will I be a soldier,” I cried, “and greater than the Governor himself.”  And I believed it.

“Papa says I shall marry an earl,” retorts Dorothy, with a toss of her pretty head.

“There are no earls among us,” I exclaimed hotly, for even then I had some of that sturdy republican spirit which prevailed among the younger generation.  “Our earls are those who have made their own way, like my grandfather.”  For I had lately heard Captain Clapsaddle say this and much more on the subject.  But Dorothy turned up her nose.

“I shall go home when I am eighteen,”—­she said, “and I shall meet his Majesty the King.”

And to such an argument I found no logical answer.