“Out on you, you flirting critturs!” said she, her indignation provoked, and her sense of propriety shocked by such unworthy behaviour:—­“Stop thar, you Nell! whar you going?  You Sally, you Phoebe, you Jane, and the rest of you! ha’nt you no better idea of what’s manners for a Cunnel’s daughters?  I’m ashamed of you,—­to run ramping and tearing after the strange men thar, like tom-boys, or any common person’s daughters!  Laws! do remember your father’s a Cunnel in the milishy, and set down in the porch here on the bench, like genteel young ladies; or stand up, if you like that better, and wait till your father, Cunnel Bruce that is, brings up the captains:  one of ’em’s a rale army captain, with epaulets and broad-sword, with a chance of money, and an uncommon handsome sister,—­rale genteel people from old Virginnee:  and I’m glad of it,—­it’s so seldom you sees any body but common persons come to Kentucky.  Do behave yourselves:  thar’s Telie Doe thar at the loom don’t think so much as turning her eyes around; she’s a pattern for you.”

“Law, mother!” said the eldest of the daughters, bridling with disdain, “I reckon I know how to behave myself as well as Telie Doe, or any other girl in the settlement;”—­a declaration echoed and re-echoed by her sisters, all of whom bent their eyes towards a corner of the ample porch, where, busied with a rude loom, fashioned perhaps by the axe and knife of the militia colonel himself, on which she was weaving a coarse cloth from the fibres of the flax-nettle, sat a female somewhat younger than the eldest of the sisters, and doubtless of a more humble degree, as was shown by the labour in which she was engaged, while the others seemed to enjoy a holiday, and by her coarse brown garments, worn at a moment when the fair Bruces were flaunting in their best bibs and tuckers, the same having been put on not more in honour of the exiles, whose coming had been announced the day before, than out of compliment to the young men of the settlement, who were wont to assemble on such occasions to gather the latest news from the States.

The pattern of good manners thus referred to, was as unconscious of the compliment bestowed upon her by the worthy Mrs. Bruce as of the glances of disdain it drew from the daughters, being apparently at that moment too much occupied with her work to think of anything else; nor did she lift up her eyes until, the conversation having been resumed between the mother and daughters, one of the latter demanded “what was the name of that army captain, that was so rich and great, of whom her mother had been talking?”

“Captain Roland Forrester,” replied the latter; at the sound of which name the maiden at the loom started and looked up with an air of fright, that caused exceeding diversion among the others.  “Look at Telie Doe!” they cried, laughing:  “you can’t speak above your breath but she thinks you are speaking to her; and, sure, you can’t speak to her, but she looks as if she would jump out of her skin, and run away for her dear life!”