Nobody seemed to know how everybody got into the way of calling her "Old Madam Leigh." It was not a Virginia custom, and there was not another old lady in the neighborhood to whom the title of "Madam" was ever given. After she had lived to be the oldest woman in the county, the "Old" was prefixed, naturally enough.
I got to know her through Cousin Molly Belle.
"I declare, Frank, Molly has never seen Queen Mab and her hummers!" she said at dinner one day. "I'm ashamed of myself for not having taken her there. It's just the sort of thing she would enjoy."
When Mrs. Frank Morton was ashamed of having done anything, or having left anything undone, the next, and a quick step with her, was to mend the fault without further waste of words. We went over to Old Madam Leigh's that same afternoon,—she, Cousin Frank, and I,—on horseback, "the road to Queen Mab's palace being the vilest in the State," as my hostess averred.
I thought it a delightful road. It left the main highway a mile beyond Cousin Frank's plantation gate, and lost its way in oak and hickory woods, where the trees touched over our heads. I said they were "trying to shake hands with one another."
"They will be hugging one another before we go much farther," said Cousin Frank.
As they did when we began to climb a long hill, washed into crooked gullies by the water that tore down to the creek at the bottom whenever it rained hard. After this was a short and steeper hill, and then another long one, and we were on the edge of a clearing, very bright and sunny after the green glooms of the forest.
"Does Queen Mab drive this way, often, in her chariot-and-four?" I inquired, as we struck into a gentle gallop along a grassy lane.
"Queen Mab's chariot has not been out of the carriage-house in twenty-five years," answered Cousin Molly Belle. "There is another road from her house to where everyday people live, but it would take us a long way around. Mother can recollect when this was a good road, and much travelled."