Ah, that was the worst of it!  The vixen was conscious of her beauty.  But her airs were so natural that young and old bowed before her.  Nothing but worship had she had from the cradle.  I would that Mr. Peale had painted her in her girlhood as a type of our Maryland lady of quality.  Harvey was right when he called her a thoroughbred.  Her nose was of patrician straightness, and the curves of her mouth came from generations of proud ancestors.  And she had blue eyes to conquer and subdue; with long lashes to hide them under when she chose, and black hair with blue gloss upon it in the slanting lights.  I believe I loved her best in the riding-habit that was the colour of the red holly in our Maryland woods.  At Christmas-tide, when we came to the eastern shore, we would gallop together through miles of country, the farmers and servants tipping and staring after her as she laid her silver-handled whip upon her pony.  She knew not the meaning of fear, and would take a fence or a ditch that a man might pause at.  And so I fell into the habit of leading her the easy way round, for dread that she would be hurt.

How those Christmas times of childhood come sweeping back on my memory!  Often, and without warning, my grandfather would say to me:  “Richard, we shall celebrate at the Hall this year.”  And it rarely turned out that arrangements had not been made with the Lloyds and the Bordleys and the Manners, and other neighbours, to go to the country for the holidays.  I have no occasion in these pages to mention my intimacy with the sons and daughters of those good friends of the Carvels’, Colonel Lloyd and Mr. Bordley.  Some of them are dead now, and the rest can thank God and look back upon worthy and useful lives.  And if any of these, my old playmates, could read this manuscript, perchance they might feel a tingle of recollection of Children’s Day, when Maryland was a province.  We rarely had snow; sometimes a crust upon the ground that was melted into paste by the noonday sun, but more frequently, so it seems to me, a foggy, drizzly Christmas, with the fires crackling in saloon and lady’s chamber.  And when my grandfather and the ladies and gentlemen, his guests, came down the curving stairs, there were the broadly smiling servants drawn up in the wide hall,—­all who could gather there,—­and the rest on the lawn outside, to wish “Merry Chris’mas” to “de quality.”  The redemptioners in front, headed by Ivie and Jonas Tree, tho’ they had long served their terms, and with them old Harvey and his son; next the house blacks and the outside liveries, and then the oldest slaves from the quarters.  This line reached the door, which Scipio would throw open at “de quality’s” appearance, disclosing the rest of the field servants, in bright-coloured gowns, and the little negroes on the green.  Then Mr. Carvel would make them a little speech of thanks and of good-will, and white-haired Johnson of the senior quarters, who had been with my great-grandfather, would start the carol in a quaver.