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 Jennings and Ridouts, and Colonel Sharpe, who remained in the province, and many more families of prominence which I have not space to mention, all came to Gordon’s Pride.  Some of these, as their names proclaim, were of the King’s side; but the bulk of Mr. Swain’s company were stanch patriots, and toasted Miss Patty instead of his Majesty.  By this I do not mean that they lacked loyalty, for it is a matter of note that our colony loved King George.

I must not omit from the list above the name of my good friend, Captain Clapsaddle.

Nor was there lack of younger company.  Betty Tayloe, who plied me with questions concerning Dorothy and London, but especially about the dashing and handsome Lord Comyn; and the Dulany girls, and I know not how many others.  Will Fotheringay, when he was home from college, and Archie Brice, and Francis Willard (whose father was now in the Assembly) and half a dozen more to court Patty, who would not so much as look at them.  And when I twitted her with this she would redden and reply:  “I was created for a housewife, sir, and not to make eyes from behind a fan.”  Indeed, she was at her prettiest and best in the dimity frock, with the sleeves rolled up.

’Twas a very merry place, the manor of Gordon’s Pride.  A generous bowl of punch always stood in the cool hall, through which the south winds swept from off the water, and fruit and sangaree and lemonade were on the table there.  The manor had no ball-room, but the negro fiddlers played in the big parlour.  And the young folks danced till supper time.  In three months Patty’s suppers grew famous in a colony where there was no lack of good cooks.