"In this house. In my care partly. She has two trustees, or guardians, besides. One is your father's brother, James Henry, who lives not far from Germantown. But I forget—you know nothing of our localities."
"An uncle! Really that had slipped my mind. And has he any family?"
"One son of his own. A youth and two girls, orphans, whose mother was his wife's sister, have a home there. They are Friends of the quite strict order."
"I must find them. My remembrance of him had faded, but I think I do recall his coming in to dinner at my father's. So my little sister is here? I have said the name over many times. Primrose. Is she as pleasing as the name? If she favors her mother she must be pretty enough."
"She is very well looking," was the quiet answer.
"And somewhat of an heiress."
"No one can tell about property in such times as these. I am sorry thou shouldst have been disappointed in this respect."
The young fellow shrugged his shoulders and smiled with a kind of gay indifference.
"A young woman when Sir Wyndham was up at London captured him. He had gone many a time and had his yearly carouse with no danger, but she made him fast before he could fairly escape. She pays him much outward devotion. There was a great family of girls and they were glad to get homes, having little fortune, but being well connected. Then her child, being a boy, knocked me out altogether; the estate and title going in the male line. Still, he was generous to me. And being of a somewhat adventurous disposition I thought to enlist in the King's Guard, but there being a call for men to subdue the rebelling colonies, I decided to come hither."
"Thy philosophic acceptance speaks well for thee. Few young men could take a disappointment so calmly."