At supper they were waited on by the old negro woman she had seen before, whom both their host and hostess called “Mammy,” and treated not so much as a servant, as if she were one of the family; and though the china was old and cracked, and mostly of odd pieces, the young hostess presided with an ease which filled Ruth with astonishment. “Why, she could not do it better if she had lived in a city all her life, and she is not a bit embarrassed by us,” she thought to herself. She observed that the only two pretty and sound cups were given to her and her father. The one she had was so dainty and unusual that she could not help looking at it closely, and was a little taken aback, on glancing up, to find her hostess’s eyes resting on her. The smile that came into them, however, reassured Ruth, and she ventured to say, half apologetically, that she was admiring the cup. “Yes, it is pretty, isn’t it?” assented the other girl. “It has quite a history; you must get my father to tell it to you. There used to be a set of them.” “It was a set which was presented to one of my ancestors by Charles the Second,” said the father thus appealed to, much as if he had said, “It is a set that was given me yesterday by a neighbor.” Ruth looked at him with wide-open eyes and a little uncomfortable feeling that he should tell her such a falsehood. His face, however, wore the same calm look. “If you inspect closely, you can still make out the C. R. on it, though it is almost obliterated. My ancestor was with his father at Carisbrooke,” he added, casually, and Ruth, glancing at her father, saw that it was true, and at the same moment took in also the fact that they had reached the place they had been looking for; and that this farmer, as she had supposed him to be, was none other than Dr. Cary, and the young girl whom she had been patronizing, was Larry Middleton’s Blair Cary, a lady like herself. How could she have made the mistake! As she looked at her host again, the thoughtful, self-contained face, the high-bred air, the slightly aquiline nose, the deep eyes, and the calm mouth and the pointed beard made a perfect Vandyke portrait. Even the unstarched, loose collar and turned-back cuffs added to the impression. Ruth seemed to have been suddenly carried back over two hundred years to find herself in presence of an old patrician. She blushed with confusion over her stupidity, and devoutly hoped within herself that no one had noticed her mistake.