My mother appeared to be wholly absorbed in her stocking; she had dropped a stitch and was working her needles painfully, trying to recover it. A half sad smile, half pleased expression came into her face and a faint blush upon her brown cheek. "Well, I suppose the journey I took in the red cloak with the tansy figures is what your sister wants me to tell you about. My mother, your grandmother, was a widow. I never saw my own father, for I was born while he was away fighting in the battles of the Revolution and he never returned; he was killed at Yorktown. When I was about ten years old my mother had an offer of marriage from a farmer in Medway who had lost his wife; his children had grown up, married and settled excepting one son twenty years old. It was a matter of convenience on both sides; my mother needed a home and he needed a housekeeper. The marriage took place in her own house. But she did not go immediately to her new home; she had a little property to dispose of and other small affairs to arrange. When she had sold everything but her old white mare she set out for Medway upon the mare's back, taking me with her on a pillion behind. It was a day in Spring, and although not cold, I wore my cloak as the easiest way of carrying it. No doubt it was a queer spectacle we made; yet, not as queer then as it would seem now--the old white mare ambling along, head down, and feet hardly clearing the ground under the heavy load, for your grandmother was a large, stout woman and we had a number of bags and bundles fastened onto the saddle, and I almost hidden among them, was quite covered by my cloak so that I might have been mistaken for another parcel hanging behind my mother's broad back. She wore an immense bonnet flaring wide in front and big bowed silver spectacles. I had on a small tightly-fitting bright yellow cap tied under my chin with blue ribbon. It was not a long journey from Bellingham to Medway, but it was the first I had ever taken, and it seemed to me it would never end. I was much subdued and even frightened on the way. It was all so strange and perplexing to me this marriage of my mother to a strange man, giving up my childhood home and going to another of which I knew nothing. Little did I imagine the destiny that awaited me there.