"One of our own cooks and my mother's recipe," exclaimed the other, "and I had to come all the way to Georgia to get it, for Aunt Rose never would show me exactly how to make them!" CHAPTER XI. Not far from Greenfield was a place called "Rustic Lodge." This house surrounded by a forest of grand old oaks, was not large or handsome. But its inmates were ladies and gentlemen of the old English style. The grandmother, about ninety years of age, had been in her youth one of the belles at the Williamsburg Court in old colonial days. A daughter of Sir Dudley Digges, and descended from English nobility, she had been accustomed to the best society. Her manners and conversation were dignified and attractive. Among reminiscences of colonial times, she remembered Lord Botetourt, of whom she related interesting incidents. The son of this old lady, about sixty years of age, and the proprietor of the estate, was a true picture of the "old English gentleman." His manners, conversation, thread-cambric shirt frills, cuffs and long queue tied with a black ribbon, made the picture complete. His two daughters, young ladies of exquisite refinement, had been brought up by their aunt and grandmother to observe strictly all the proprieties of life. This establishment was proverbial for its order and method, the most systematic rules being in force everywhere. The meals were served punctually at the same instant every day. Old "Aunt Nelly" dressed and undressed her old mistress always at the same hour. A gentle "tapping at the chamber door"--not by the "raven," but the cook--called the mistress to an interview at the same moment every morning with that functionary, which resulted in the choicest dinners, breakfasts and suppers; this interview lasting half an hour and never repeated during the day. Exactly at the same hour every morning the old gentleman's horse was saddled, and he entered the neighboring village so promptly as to enable some of the inhabitants to set their clocks by him. This family had possessed great wealth in Eastern Virginia during the colonial government under which many of its members held high offices. But impoverished by high living, entertaining company and a heavy British debt, they had been reduced in their possessions to about fifty negroes, with only money enough to purchase this plantation upon which they had retired from the gay and charming society of Williamsburg. They carried with them, however, some remains of their former grandeur: old silver, old jewelry, old books, old and well-trained servants, and an old English coach, which was the curiosity of all other vehicular curiosities. How the family ever climbed into it, or got out of it, and how the driver ever reached the dizzy height upon which he sat, was the mystery of my childhood.