their younger son enter the coach, while young Tom mounts his horse and
prepares to ride by the window. The odorous cedar chests containing my
lady's wardrobe are strapped behind or piled on top, the negroes form a
grinning avenue, the whip cracks, and they are off, half a dozen servants
following in an open cart. It is a four days' journey to Williamsburg,
over roads whose roughness tests the coach's strength to the uttermost
but it is the one event of all the year to this isolated family, and
small wonder that they look forward to it with eager anticipation.

Once arrived at Williamsburg, what craning of necks and waving of
handkerchiefs and kissing of hands to acquaintances, as the coach rolls
along the wide, white, sandy street, scorching in the sun, with the
governor's house, called by courtesy a palace, at one end, and the
College of William and Mary at the other, and perhaps two hundred
straggling wooden houses in between. The coaches and chariots which line
the street give earnest of the families already assembled from Princess
Ann to Fairfax and the Northern Neck. My lady notes that the Burkes have
at last got them a new chariot from London, and her husband looks with
appreciative eyes at the handsome team of matched grays which draw it. As
for young Tom, his eyes, I warrant, are on none of these, but on the bevy
of blooming girls who promenade the side-path, arrayed in silks and
satins and brocades, their eyes alight, their cheeks aglow with the joy
of youth and health. Small blame to him, say I, for that is just where my
own eyes would have been.

That very night Governor Gooch gave a ball at his palace, and be sure the
Stewart family was there, my lady in her new London gown of flowered
damask in the very latest mode, and Tom in his best suit of peach-blossom
velvet, and in great hopes of attracting to himself some of the bright
eyes he had seen that afternoon. Nor was he wholly unsuccessful, for one