The Entailed Hat | Page 6

his attire?"
"I stand corrected, Milburn," said the Judge. "Good feeling for you
more than curiosity made me suggest it. And I may also remark to you,
sir, that when you lend me money you will always do it commercially
and not socially."
"Very well," remarked Meshach Milburn, "and if I ever enter your door,
I will then take off my hat."
* * * * *
The next morning Meshach Milburn surprised Samson Hat by saying:
"Boy, when you have another fight and make yourself a barbarian again,
remember to bring back, from Nassawongo furnace, about a peck of the
bog ores!"
* * * * *
The years moved on without much change in Princess Anne. The little
Manokin river brought up oysters from the bay, and carried off the corn
and produce. The great brick academy at neighboring "Lower Trappe"
boarded and educated the brightest youths of the best families on the
Peninsula; and these perceived, as the annual summers brought their
fulness, what portion of their beauty remained with Vesta Custis. She
was like Helen of Troy, a subject of homage and dispute in childhood,
and became a woman, in men's consideration, almost imperceptibly.
Sent to Baltimore to be educated, her return was followed by
suitors--not youthful admirers only, but mature ones--and the young
men of the Peninsula remarked with chagrin: "None of us have a
chance! Some great city nabob will get her."

But the academy boys and visitors, and the townspeople, had one
common opportunity to see her and to hear her--when she sang, every
Sabbath and church day, in the Episcopal church.
Her voice was the natural expression of her beauty--sweet, powerful,
free, and easily trained. A divine bird seemed hidden in the old church
when this noble yet tender voice broke forth; but they who turned to
see the singer who had made such Paradise, looked almost on Eve
herself.
She was rather slight, tall, and growing fuller slowly every year, like
one in whom growth was early, yet long, and who would wholly
mature not until near middle life. Her head, however, was perfection,
even in girlhood, not less by its proportions than its carriage: her
graceful figure bore it like the slender setting, holding up the first
splendor of the peach; a head of vital and spiritual beauty, where purity
and luxuriance, woman and mind, dwelt in harmony and joy. As she
seemed ever to be ripening, so she seemed never to have been a child,
but, with faculties and sense clear and unintimidated, she was never
wanting in modesty, nor accused of want of self-possession. Judge
Custis made her his reliance and pride; she never reproved his errors,
nor treated them familiarly, but settled the household by a consent
which all paid to her character alone. More than once she had appeared
at the furnace mansion when the Judge's long absence had awakened
some jealousy or distrust:
"Father, please go home with me! I want you to drive me back."
The easy, self-indulgent Judge would look a slight protest, but at the
soft, spirited command; "Come, sir! you can't stay here any more,"
dismissed his companions, and took his place at the head of Princess
Anne society.
Vesta was almost a brunette, with the rich colors of her type--eyebrows
like the raven's wing, ripe, red lips, and hair whose darkness and length,
released from the crown into which she wound it, might have spun her
garments. Her eyes were of a steel-blue, in which the lights had the
effect of black. She was dark with sky breaking through, like the rich

dusk and twilights over the Chesapeake.
People wondered that, with such beauty, ease, and accomplishments
she was not proud; but her pride was too ethereal to be seen. It was not
the vain consciousness of gifts and endowments, but the serene sense of
worthiness, of unimpaired health, honor, and descent, which made her
kind and thoughtful to a degree only less than piety. Grateful for her
social rank and parentage, she adorned but did not forget them. The
suitors who came for her were weighed in this scale of perfect
desert--to be sons of such parents and associates of her married sisters
and sisters-in-law. Not one had survived the test, yet none knew where
he failed.
"Vesta is too good for any of them," exclaimed the Judge, on more than
one occasion. "When I get the furnace in such shape that it will run
itself I will take my daughter to Europe and give her a musical
education."
In truth, the Judge had expectations of his daughter; for the reputation
he had attained as a manufacturer was not without its drawbacks. He
maintained two establishments; he supported a large body of laborers
and dependents, some of whom he had brought