Pedigrees, I am certain, was her gauge of life. She was more man than woman, handsome though she was. She should have been a bewigged, knee-breeched, ruffle-shirted, horse-racing Virginia gentleman of the old school, as many of her ancestors had been. She still clung to a few blooded horses, though her immaculate dairy of Jersey cows was her greatest pride. When my parents died, even before I could remember, she had adopted me. She intended that I should inherit The Home Stretch. Then, true to her ideas, she had planned a proper mate for me. She had been a success in mating everything but herself. Her ribbons won at State Fairs and in Horse Shows proved it; for her Merino sheep she held a great cup from the International Exhibit in Paris. The wool of her Tennessee sheep had gone back across the ocean, and beaten the parent wool on its own soil. This great, heavy, solid silver cup sat on the mantel in the library, and every spring, when I had a cold, she had given me punch cobbler out of it. She had early paired me off with Eloise Ward, who was an orphan, and a distant relative of her mother. My Aunt had adopted her, as she had me, and given her every grace of a fashionable education. At ten she had, as she expressed it, engaged us. I remember it was Eloise’s tenth birthday and my twelfth. She bought a little turquoise ring and made me give it to Eloise. "Now, Jack, Eloise is yours! Eloise, you will marry him when you are grown. Now kiss each other as sensibly engaged people do, to seal it. After this no more kissing." The last advice was unneeded. Up to then we had never kissed, but had fought continually. Knowing Aunt Lucretia, and that if we did not do as she said, something uncomfortable would happen to us, we screwed up our mouths, each trying to outdo the other in mock martyrdom, and complied. After that Aunt Lucretia was very gracious. I think we showed remarkable horse-sense, young as we were, in carrying out her wishes, inasmuch as we expected some day to own the great farm and house.