A Little Girl in Old Washington

by Amanda M. Douglas

Miss Greaves was in her element. She had not taken kindly to the prospect of being deposed, though the training of women in her day led them to accept the inevitable without complaining. She was rather proud, too, that her brother had won a young woman; and Marian's sudden gravity after her engagement had given her considerable satisfaction.

"The doctor holds out very little hope of perfect recovery," she said to the younger woman at one call. "He thinks brother's mind will never be quite right again. He has a good appetite now and sleeps well, but it is very sad to be stricken down in the very prime of life. On our mother's side we are a long-lived race. I had an aunt who lay paralyzed for seven years, and was eighty when she died."

Marian shuddered. Her father's failing health had demanded most of her attention. Was she in any way relieved? She tried not to think of it. No one referred to the marriage, except now and then some of the slaves, who counted up all the bad signs in an awesome fashion.

Dolly had enjoyed everything to the uttermost, and was delighted with her new home and her new relatives. Communication between even the most important cities was tardy at that time, and often sent by private messenger. Yet the political interest of the States was kept up keenly, almost to rivalry. New England, whose commerce had been injured the most, complained loudly. The States were between two fires. England was bringing all her power to bear upon the Emperor Napoleon. Neither country paid any attention to the rights of neutrals. There was the old romantic remembrance of France coming to our assistance in our mighty struggle with the mother country; but there were a hundred relationships with England where there was one with France, and Napoleon's ruthlessness had alienated the noblest sense of the community.

Yet living went on in the lavish, cordial Virginian fashion at the old plantation, if it was not quite so full of gayety. There were two attractive young women now, and the young men were haunting the house, planning riding parties and a day's outing to some grove or wood, a sail down or up the Potomac, and a three-days' visit to some neighbor who rather regretfully gave up dancing on account of the recent death. Louis had been putting in law with his other studies, and was not to graduate for another year.

Roger Carrington was now a steady visitor, and all the household knew he was young missy's lover. Her father's assent had been cordially given. Her own was still in abeyance. Jaqueline had a willful streak in her nature. If someone had opposed, she would have sided at once with her lover. But everybody agreed. Mrs. Carrington treated her as a daughter already, and longed to have the engagement announced. Roger pleaded.

"I want to be quite sure that I love you better than anybody," she would say with a kind of dainty sweetness. "If one should make a mistake!"

"But we are such friends already. We have been for a long time. Surely if you disliked me you would have found it out before this."

"But I don't dislike you. I like you very much. Only it seems that things which come so easy—"

She let her lovely eyes droop, and the color came and went in her face. How exquisite her rose-leaf cheeks were! He wished he had the right to kiss them fifty times an hour. A husband would have. But there was a fine courtesy between lovers of that day. And there was always some curling tendril of shadowy hair clustering about her fair temples. Her ear, too, was like a bit of sculpture, and the lines that went down her neck and lost themselves in the roundness of her shoulders changed with every motion, each one prettier than the last, and were distractingly tempting.