ng the noble Colonel came home
from his mines, who saluted me very civilly, and Mrs.
Spotswood's sister, Miss Theky, who had been to meet him _en
cavalier_, was kind too, as to bid me welcome.

"We talked over a legion of old stories, supped about nine, and
then prattled with the ladies till it was time to retire. In
the meantime, I observed my old friend to be very uxorious and
exceedingly fond of his children. This was opposite to the
maxims he used to preach before he was married, that I could
not forbear rubbing up the memory of them. But he gave a very
good natural turn to his change of sentiments, by alleging that
whoever brings a poor gentlewoman to so solitary a place, from
all her friends and acquaintances, would be very ungrateful not
to use her and all that belongs to her with all possible
tenderness.

"We all kept snug in our apartments till nine, except Miss
Theky, who was the housewife of the family. At that hour we met
over a pot of coffee, which was not quite strong enough to give
us the palsy. After breakfast the Colonel and I left the ladies
to their domestic affairs, and took a turn in the garden which
has nothing but three terraced walks that fall in slopes one
below the other.... I let him know that I had come to be
instructed by so great a master in the mystery of making iron
and that he led the way and was the Tubal Cain of America....
He assured me he was not only the first in this country, but
the first in North America who had erected a regular furnace,
that they ran altogether upon bloomeries in New England and
Pennsylvania, till his example had made them attempt greater
works.... At night we drank prosperity to all the Colonel's
projects in a bowl of rack punch, and then retired to our
devotions....

"I sallied out at the first summons to breakfast, where our
conversation with the ladies, like whipped sillibub, was very
pretty, but had nothing in it. This it seems was Miss Theky's
birthday, upon which I made her my compliments, and wished she
might live twice as long a married woman as she had lived a
maid. I did not presume to pry into the secret of her age, nor
was she forward to disclose it.... She contrived to make this a
day of mourning for having nothing better at present to set her
affecti