Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/52

48 was in an arm of the river on the mill side, eight hundred acres as fertile as there was in a fertile county. The land rolled gently from the flat, rich river bottom, changing gradually into more decided undulations. In the distance one could see the foothills of the Blue Ridge and on clear days the mountains, blue and far away.

Mill House told, more loudly than any Taylor, that its original owner had not been of the aristocracy. Although the main part of the building had been erected at the period when colonial architecture flourished in Virginia, no colonial trace was left. No doubt the bricks had been brought from England but they had been put into place by a matter-of-fact person who had in his mind merely the building of a house with four walls, with holes left therein for windows and doors. The ceilings were low and the woodwork of the simplest, with none of the beautiful moulding which characterized most colonial homes. Each succeeding generation had added in some way to the house and the effect was on the whole pleasing. Mill House gave one an idea of comfort and plenty. Each lean-to had been built, if without architectural plan, at least with the intention of making things more comfortable for the inhabitants. Broad porches had been added from time to