father and mother were cordial, the son chewed ruminatively upon his
fingers and fastened upon my companion a gaze not merely interested, but
expressive of enraptured astonishment. Likewise, though his parents
received us kindly, they did not crow and gurgle with delight; and
though, on our departure, they said that we might come again, they
neither waved their hands nor yet blew bubbles.

Though the house has been "done over" four times, and though the
paneling was torn out of one room to make way for wall paper when wall
paper came into style, everything has now been restored, and the place
stands to-day to all intents and purposes exactly as it was. That so few
changes were ever made in it, that it weathered successfully, with its
contents, the disastrous period of Eastlake furniture and the American
mansard roof, is a great credit to the Carroll family, and it is
delightful to see such a house in the possession of those who can love
it as it deserves to be loved, and preserve it as it deserves to be
preserved.

Mr. Charles Bancroft Carroll, who is a graduate of Annapolis and a
grandson of the late Governor John Lee Carroll of Maryland, now farms
some twenty-four hundred acres of the five or six thousand which
surround the manor house. He raises blooded cattle and horses, and,
though he rides with the Elkridge Hunt, also keeps his own pack and is
starting the Howard County Hounds, an organization that will hunt the
country around the manor, which is full of foxes.

Of the innumerable family portraits contained in the house not a few are
valuable and almost all are pleasing. When I remarked upon the high
average of good looks among his progenitors, Mr. Carroll smiled in
agreement, saying: "Yes, I'm proud of these pictures of my ancestors;