Six years had passed since Major Duncombe's sudden death. He was the most popular man in the county, and beloved by high and low, yet the gap made by his going was apparently filled.
Robert, the eldest son, inherited the homestead, and at his marriage, two years later, his mother went to live with her daughter Eliza, who had married a Richmond lawyer. By the terms of her father's will Emily Duncombe received a valuable farm, embracing the house that had been built for the overseer.
Robert Duncombe would gladly have retained Mr. Grigsby in his employ, but the thrifty Scotchman had other views for himself. For years he had been putting aside money for the purchase of a home for his family, and a small plantation a few miles back from the river happened to be for sale about the time Major Duncombe died. Mrs. McLaren advanced a considerable sum to make up the necessary amount for the purchase. At the date at which our story reopens the Grigsbys had lived for five years and a half in the comfortable brick house attached to the Oatley farm. Perfect June days had come again. Bees were riding the red clover-tops, and everything that could blossom had burst into bloom as the birds into song. The great fields of oats, from which the place took its name, ruffled before the breeze as green billows are rocked and crisped by sea-winds; the soft blue of the sky was unclouded, and heaven's own peace was upon the face of the earth.
Something—and much—of this was in Felicia Grigsby's mind as she rode dreamily through the familiar scenes the day after she had returned home "for good." That was the way her father put it, and she echoed it heartily. Not cheerily as yet. Aunt Jean had joined husband and child in the world that makes up for the losses and mistakes of this. Flea's new black dress told that the grief of parting with her best friend was still fresh in her heart. Mrs. McLaren's property was divided equally between her brother, her namesake niece, and her nephew David.
Nobody called him "Dee" now. The diminutive did not suit the stalwart youth of seventeen who rode beside his sister to-day, and did most of the talking for the first hour. He was tall for his years, and well knit together, with a frank face his sister thought handsome.
"You were disappointed that I didn't go to college," he was saying, "but I was cut out and made up for a farmer, and nothing else. The smell of a ploughed field is the sweetest perfume in the world to me. When I see my crops growing, I feel my soul growing with them. Where will you find anything in town equal to that, now?"
They were on the top of a hill overlooking the fertile river-lands backed by a line of forest. The noble James, full to the brim after the May rains, glittered in the sun, and made a golden rim for the picture.
"We have the 'sweet fields,' the 'living green,' and the 'rolling flood' of the hymn," said Flea, softly. "Our Virginia is a bonnie country. I am thankful that it is 'my ain countree.' Why, there are the roof and chimneys of the old house! I did not know they could be seen from here. How strange it seems that we should be living anywhere else! How much stranger that Miss Emily should be living there!"
"The house is twice as big as it used to be," replied David. "That fellow made it his business forthwith to alter it as much as he could. You can't make him madder than by speaking of it as 'Grigsby's', or, worse yet, the 'overseer's house.' It is 'Broadlawn' now, if you please, and the model place of the neighborhood. But the old name sticks to it, and all the closer because it frets him. I never speak to him. I cut him upon principle. I promised myself over six years ago to thrash him as soon as I got big enough, and I'm on the lookout for an excuse to do it."
"When the time comes, give him a lash or two in my name—there's a dear boy! All the same, he did us a good turn without meaning to. If he had been half decent with us we might have staid in the Old-Field school for years. When it and the Old-Field schoolmaster are things of the past nobody will believe that such abuses existed in a Christian community. I am sorry for the Tayloe children."