Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/98

94 necessary, and now the smokehouse, corn crib, and henhouse were cheek by jowl with the great house. The cow stable and barn were close enough to give olfactory evidence of their proximity and a huge manure pile had thrust itself into the foreground of the landscape.

The Bollings were true F. F. V.'s. Not only were they among the first settlers in the new world, but the founder of the Virginia family was of noble birth. This particular branch of Bollings had settled at The Hedges in the eighteenth century. The first house had been of logs, two rooms and a loft, with an open passage dividing the rooms and huge stone chimneys on both sides of the house. Later on this house had been abandoned for the great brick mansion and the old home turned over to the slaves. It was still occupied by the numerous descendants of Aunt Peachy.

The son of that early Bolling who had taken such delight and pride in his garden had married the daughter of his father's overseer. That was in Revolutionary times, and since then it had become a habit of the sons of the house to mate beneath them socially. There had been a gradual sinking of standards through the generations until at the present time the owner of The Hedges had reached the lowest rung of the