"We'd got our club, and a couple of branch banks, and a
post-office, and Governor La Trobe, and Bishop Perry, and the nicest
lot of fellows that ever came together to make a new country. We were
as happy as kings. All young men. I was barely twenty-three when I took
up Redford--named after our place at home. You know our place at home,
of course?"

"I have seen it from the road," answered the guest, arrested in his
mental wanderings by the mention of his own age.

"You must have seen it often, living so close."

"I never lived close myself; I am a Londoner."

"It's all the same--your people do. The Pennycuicks and the Careys
have been neighbours for generations."

"I am only distantly related to that family."

"A Carey is a Carey," persisted the old man, who had determined to have
it so from the first, and he would listen to no disclaimers.

He had already referred darkly to that Mary Carey of the hooked nose
and pointed chin. His eldest daughter, he said, had been named after
her. This eldest daughter, with her too-ruddy face, had shyly drawn
near, and taken a chair at her father's elbow, where she sat very
quietly, busily tatting. Plain though her face was, she had beautiful
hands. Her play with thread and shuttle, just under Guthrie's eyes,
held them watchful for a time--the time during which no sign of
Deborah's white gown was to be perceived upon the landscape.