“That’s a good boy, Mortimer. I’m glad you realize that I know best.”
While Morey was making his hasty toilet he heard a creaking sound outside. Rushing to the window he was about to break out into laughter. Then he stopped and a little flush came into his face. Slowly advancing along the road from the stable lot was his mother’s carriage. It was the old surrey that his father had once used in transporting the hounds to the distant meets. Paintless, its bottom gaping, its top cracked and split and its wheels wobbling, it groaned forward toward the mounting block at the end of the gallery. To it was hitched fat Betty, sleek and shiny with rubbing. The harness used only on such occasions, still withstood the final ravages of time, for on one bridle blinder shone one glittering polished silver M—old Marsh’s pride and joy.
What had amused Morey was the sight of the old servitor, “Colonel Marshall’s overseer,” Marsh Green. His shoes were shining, and a fresh white shirt showed resplendent beneath his worn coat, but the old man’s chief glory was his battered silk hat. By his side rode Amos, splendid in his shoes and Morey’s trousers—his “meetin’ pants.”
What had brought the flush to Morey’s face was the sudden thought: “the Careys do not come to Aspley Place in such a turnout.” And, for the first time in his life, Morey felt ashamed of the old home and its surroundings.
[CHAPTER VI]
MOREY LEARNS HE IS A BANKRUPT.
Major Carey’s mansion in the village of Lee’s Court House connected that old-fashioned, white-housed settlement with the plantations lying about the town. It was of red brick, square and solemn, with a slate mansard roof. In front, four gigantic white wooden columns stood like towers. Unlike the Aspley house, these columns—very cold in a coat of new paint—carried an upper gallery or balcony extending the width of the house. And at the left end of the lower gallery a slender circular stairway, concealed behind a trellis of green slats and partly covered with ivy, led to the upper balcony. Immense oak trees afforded shade in what had once been an extensive dooryard.
But the village, which was not wholly asleep, encroaching on the place, had eaten off sections of the old yard on each side. What the Carey home had been at one time, while tobacco growing had been profitable and before Major Carey had begun to devote himself to banking and money lending in town, might be seen from the little windows on the roof. From this elevated point an observer might see that the oak trees in the yard had once extended in two long rows half a mile from the front gallery, marking the old plantation drive. New streets had cut across these and only the tops of the mighty oaks could be made out stretching through the growing town.
It was almost dusk when Amos Green, stiff in his heavy shoes, sprang from the surrey and admitted Mrs. Marshall and her son through the gate into the Carey grounds. Major Carey, his wife, and Mrs. Bradner, their married daughter, whose husband was the cashier in Captain Barber’s bank, were sitting on an iron settee along the driveway, near the house.