In childhood the season which delighted me the most was spring.  I would count the days until St. Taminas, which, as you knew, falls on the first of May.  And the old custom was for the young men to deck themselves out as Indian bucks and sweep down on the festivities around the Maypole on the town green, or at night to surprise the guests at a ball and force the gentlemen to pay down a shilling, and sometimes a crown apiece, and the host to give them a bowl of punch.  Then came June.  My grandfather celebrated his Majesty’s birthday in his own jolly fashion, and I had my own birthday party on the tenth.  And on the fifteenth, unless it chanced upon a Sunday, my grandfather never failed to embark in his pinnace at the Annapolis dock for the Hall.  Once seated in the stern between Mr. Carvel’s knees, what rapture when at last we shot out into the blue waters of the bay and I thought of the long summer of joy before me.  Scipio was generalissimo of these arrangements, and was always at the dock punctually at ten to hand my grandfather in, a ceremony in which he took great pride, and to look his disapproval should we be late.  As he turned over the key of the town house he would walk away with a stern dignity to marshal the other servants in the horse-boat.

One fifteenth of June two children sat with bated breath in the pinnace, —­Dorothy Manners and myself.  Mistress Dolly was then as mischievous a little baggage as ever she proved afterwards.  She was coming to pass a week at the Hall, her parents, whose place was next to ours, having gone to Philadelphia on a visit.  We rounded Kent Island, which lay green and beautiful in the flashing waters, and at length caught sight of the old windmill, with its great arms majestically turning, and the cupola of Carvel House shining white among the trees; and of the upper spars of the shipping, with sails neatly furled, lying at the long wharves, where the English wares Mr. Carvel had commanded for the return trips were unloading.  Scarce was the pinnace brought into the wind before I had leaped ashore and greeted with a shout the Hall servants drawn up in a line on the green, grinning a welcome.  Dorothy and I scampered over the grass and into the cool, wide house, resting awhile on the easy sloping steps within, hand in hand.  And then away for that grand tour of inspection we had been so long planning together.  How well I recall that sunny afternoon, when the shadows of the great oaks were just beginning to lengthen.  Through the greenhouses we marched, monarchs of all we surveyed, old Porphery, the gardener, presenting Mistress Dolly with a crown of orange blossoms, for which she thanked him with a pretty courtesy her governess had taught her.  Were we not king and queen returned to our summer palace?  And Spot and Silver and Song and Knipe, the wolf-hound, were our train, though not as decorous as rigid etiquette demanded, since they were forever running after the butterflies.  On we went through the stiff, box-bordered walks of