Uncle Winthrop enjoyed Mrs. King's society very much. She was intelligent and had cultivated her natural abilities, she also had a certain society suavity that made her an agreeable companion. Doris thought her a good deal like Betty, she was so pleasant and ready for all kinds of enjoyment. Aunt Priscilla considered her very frivolous, and there was so much going and coming that she wondered Elizabeth did not get crazy over it.
They were to remove to New York in the fall, Mr. King having perfected his business arrangements. So Betty would have her winter in the gay city after all.
There were many delightful excursions with pleasure parties up and down the bay. The Embargo had been repealed, and the sails of merchant ships were again whitening the harbor, and business people breathed more freely.
There were Castle Island, with its fortifications and its waving flag, and queer old dreary-looking Noddle's Island, also little towns and settlements where one could spend a day delightfully. Every place, it seemed to Doris, had some queer, interesting story, and she possessed an insatiable appetite for them. There was the great beautiful sweep of Boston Bay, with its inlets running around the towns and its green islands everywhere—places that had been famous and had suffered in the war, and were soon to suffer again.
Mrs. King had a friend at Hingham, and one day they went there in a sort of family party. Uncle Winthrop obtained a carriage and drove them around. It was still famous for its wooden-ware factories, and Uncle Win said in the time of Governor Andros, when money was scarce among the early settlers, Hingham had paid its taxes in milk pails, but they decided the taxes could not have been very high, or the fame of the milk pails must have been very great.
Mrs. Gerry said in the early season forget-me-nots grew wild all about, and the ground was blue with them.
"Oh, Uncle Win, let us come and see them next year," cried Doris.
Then they hunted up the old church that had been nearly rent asunder by the bringing in of a bass viol to assist the singers. Party spirit had run very high. The musical people had quoted the harps and sacbuts of King David's time, the trumpets and cymbals. At last the big bass viol won the victory and was there. And the hymn was:
"Oh, may my heart in tune be found,
Like David's harp of solemn sound."
But the old minister was not to be outdone. The hymn was lined off in this fashion: