It was a little disappointing to be compelled to abandon his dream of a Confederate colonel and of a decayed “first family.”
“But the little girl is perfectly charming,” he mused, and strode up the road humming:
“Oh, she smashed all the hearts
Of the swains in them parts,
Did Mistress Biddy O’Toole.”
The directions given him by the station-master at Sandywood Station had been so clear that, although a stranger to this part of the country, Fessenden had found his way thus far easily enough.
Now, as he topped the rise, his eyes fell at once upon Sandywood House: a buff-and-white structure, with the pillared expansiveness of a true colonial mansion. It was set upon a knoll, across an intervale, the wide expanse of the Chesapeake shimmering in front of it. Ardent Marylanders had been known to maintain that it was fully the equal of Mount Vernon itself.
The avenue leading up toward the back of the house from the main road wound a couple of hundred yards through a garden of box and lilac, then swept the pedestrian about an ell to the steps of a demilune porch, and almost vis-à-vis with half a dozen men and women drinking tea.
A plump, neutral-tinted woman, a trifle over-gowned, hurried forward to greet him.
“Why, Tom Fessenden!” she exclaimed. “So here you are at last! You bad man, you didn’t come on the right train. Your things arrived this morning, but when the car came back from the station without you, I thought you’d backed out. The next thing I was expecting was a letter from you, saying you couldn’t come at all, you irresponsible man!”