Then came the healthful walk around the grounds, the General with his darling granddaughter hanging on his arm, and Dick and Drusilla, and the nurse with the baby, sauntering along promiscuously.
During this walk Anna gave her grandfather a very sprightly and entertaining description of her journey; and in return he told her how he and Drusilla had passed their time at home.
Dick amused Drusilla with spirited sketches of travel.
When the windings of their walk brought them around home again, Dick proposed a drive through the forest to Hammond House to see the progress of the works there that must, he thought, be now near their completion.
And as all assented to the proposition, the General ordered the large six-seated family carriage; and the whole party, including little Leonard and his nurse, started for a long drive through the summer woods to Hammond House.
It was but twelve o’clock noon when they reached the house—an old mansion standing upon a high headland at the junction of Wild River with the Upper Potomac.
The woods grew up to the very garden wall and clustered thick about it.
There were mountain brooks in the neighborhood, running down to the Wild River and swelling its stream before it fell into the Potomac.
The trout fisheries there were considered very fine in their season. And it was a part of the family programme for coming years to spend the fishing season at Hammond.
It was now the beginning of the trout fishing season, and so the General and Dick, having seen Drusilla and Anna safely in the house, procured fishing tackle from Byles, the overseer, and went down to one of the bright, gravelly-bedded streams to fish.