"Is it the jackdaw that appears in borrowed plumes—some bird I have heard tell of. Why birds should borrow plumes—I am shamefully ignorant, am I not?" raising her eyes with a spice of mischief.
"Let us go and ask Ralph," he said with assumed gravity. "It will not take him long to run through two or three tomes."
"And ride by moonlight?"
"There is no moon."
"Does she not look well, Roger? A tailor could not have fitted the habit better. Do not go very far, for the air might grow chilly again."
"We will go up the creek a short distance."
Then he mounted her upon the pretty mare, his brother's favorite, for Ralph had not cared to ride. Patricia looked on a little disappointed, yet she did not really wish to go, for Madam Carrington had been telling her a curious love story about a little maid who had been sent over with a number of redemptioners, as those who were bound for a number of years were called. She had attracted the pity of a kindly man, who had purchased her years of service for his wife. Then the son had fallen in love with her, which had roused the mother's anger, when she sent her son to England to be educated and perhaps fall in love with a cousin. The little maid was rather hardly treated, when someone came to the colony in search of her, and it turned out that she was well born and heiress to a grand estate, held by a relative who had formed a villainous plot against her and reported her dead. Now that he was dying without heirs, he was desirous of making tardy reparation.
There were few story books to fall into girls' hands in those days. Swift and Sterne and Smollett were kept out of reach. Miss Burney was hardly considered proper, and Miss Austen had not been heard of in the Colonies.
Patricia was fond of old legends and ghost stories, with which the plantation was rife, and which had grown up about old houses. Unhappy lovers had a weird, fascinating interest for young girls, even if the lives of the day were the reverse of sentimental. All through the dinner she had been wondering if the little maid met her lover again; but that she came back to America, she knew, for her portrait hung in the hall among the Carrington ladies.
Ajax and Daphne rubbed noses, flung up their heads, and started off. Tame enough now is the winding creek, which was rough and rapid then, and which traveled from the upper edge of Maryland, gathering in many a little stream, rushing along in some places over great stones, winding about placidly in others, and then joining the Potomac.