By this time he was at his own grounds, and Sweeney’s honest Irish face, glowing with indignation, was watching out for him.
“Be the powers,” snorted Sweeney to the black cook, “the murtherin’ rebels took no more notice of the major than if he’d been an ould hat—an’ he’s a rale gintleman, fit ter dine with the Prisident, as he often has, an’ all the g’yurls has been tryin’ to hook him fur twinty years, bless their hearts, an’ the major as hard as a stone to the dear things, every wan of ’em!”
CHAPTER III.
Within a week or two after, one afternoon Mrs. Kitty Sherrard made her appearance at Barn Elms, with a great project in hand. She meant to give a party.
Party-giving was Mrs. Sherrard’s idiosyncrasy. According to the usual system in Virginia, during the lifetime of the late Mr. Sherrard, there was much frolicking, dancing, and hilarity at Turkey Thicket, the Sherrard place, and a corresponding narrowness of income and general behindhandedness. But since Mr. Sherrard’s death Mrs. Sherrard, along with the unvarying and sublime confidence in her husband, dead or alive, that characterizes Virginia women, had yet entirely abandoned Mr. Sherrard’s methods. The mortgage on Turkey Thicket had been paid off, the whole place farmed on common-sense principles, and the debts declared inevitable by Mr. Sherrard carefully avoided. As a matter of fact, the only people in the county who paid their taxes promptly were the widows, who nevertheless continually lamented that they were deprived of the great industry, foresight, and business capacity of their defunct lords and masters. Mrs. Sherrard gave as many parties in Mr. Sherrard’s lifetime as she did after his death; but, since that melancholy event, the parties were paid for, not charged on account.
When this startling information about the coming festivity was imparted, Jacqueline, who was sitting in her own low chair by the fire, gave a little jump.
“And,” said Mrs. Sherrard, who was a courageous person, “I’ll tell you what I am giving it for. It is to get the county people to meet George Throckmorton. Not a human being in the county has called on him, except Edmund Morford, and I fairly drove him to it. He began some of his long-winded explanations. ‘Aunt Kitty,’ he said, ‘what am I, even though I be a minister of the gospel, that I should set myself up against the spirit of the community, which is against recognizing Throckmorton?’ ‘What are you, indeed, my dear boy,’ I answered. ‘I’m not urging you to go, because it’s a matter of the slightest consequence what you do or what you don’t, but merely for your own sake, because it is illiberal and unchristian of you not to go.’ Now, Edmund is a good soul, for all his nonsense.”
Mrs. Temple was horrified at this way of speaking of the young rector.