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