"Yes. She does everything I ask her to, and I'll tell her you are going to be my best friend." "I thank thee." "Well, you are, you know. Of course you are rather old and somewhat plain, and I cannot promise not to think Master Ingle within there is handsomer, but I shall always like you best, and beauty doth not count when you know a person." "No, but 'tis an amazing good letter of introduction. Now fly up and change to thine old suit and we will build a snow-man as high as the window and we will put curls on him as long as those on that jackanapes inside--I mean as those of the beautiful young man who calls himself Ralph Ingle." When Cecil had changed to his every-day clothes he came down again looking more comfortable in mind and body. "I think," he confided to Neville, "that I could eat another piece of cake. The belt of this doublet is so much looser than in my best." "Ay, but there is dinner to come, and 'tis best to make allowance for this future; besides, who is this at the wharf in the in-bound boat?" "Why, 'tis Couthin Margaret." "So it is. For a moment I thought her a man in that long cloak and those heavy boots. Let us go down to meet her!" When they reached the dock, the man in the ketch was already clewing up the sails, while the woman on the wharf stood giving orders. At the sound of approaching footsteps she turned. Despite her rough attire and forty-odd years, Margaret Brent was a woman worth looking at. Her personality was marked by a noble largeness which obliterated detail, and cast a mantle of oblivion over defects. The first impression made upon all who came in contact with her was of her adequacy to the situation before her, whether it was a rout or a riot. This it was which a few years later won her the thanks of the Maryland Assembly for her prompt action in a political crisis, which led her kinsman to leave her sole executrix of his great estate with the brief instruction, "Take all--pay all!" and which, finally, before her death made her the most famous woman in the colony. Through all the vicissitudes of pioneer life she kept the air and bearing of race. Even now, though a wave of gray wind-blown hair had escaped from her hood, and her falling band was pulled awry, yet no princess in full regalia could have been more the great lady than she as she came forward to meet Cecil and his companion. "Sir Christopher, I greet you. I would I had known of your coming yesterday that I might have had your company and protection." Neville bowed, smiling. "The advantage of both would have been on my side, for Mistress Brent's prowess is a byword."