The property was an appendage to the Manor of Luckenoug--, and was at
this time occupied by a poor relation of Commodore Waugh, his niece,
Mary L'Oiseau, the widow of a Frenchman. Mrs. L'Oiseau had but one
child, a little girl, Jacquelina, now about eight or nine years of age.
Commodore Waugh had given them the cottage to live in, permission to
make a living, if they could, out of the poor land attached to it. This
was all the help he had afforded his poor niece, and all, as she said,
that she could reasonably expect from one who had so many dependents.
For several years past the little property had afforded her a bare
subsistence.
And now this year the long drought had parched up her garden and
corn-field, and her cows had failed in their yield of milk for the want
of grass.
It was upon a dry and burning day, near the last of August, that Mary
L'Oiseau and her daughter sat down to their frugal breakfast. And such a
frugal breakfast! The cheapest tea, with brown sugar, and a corn cake
baked upon the griddle, and a little butter--that was all! It was spread
upon a plain pine table without a tablecloth.
The furniture of the room was in keeping--a sanded floor, a chest of
drawers, with a small looking-glass, ornamented by a sprig of asparagus,
a dresser of rough pine shelves on the right of the fireplace, and a
cupboard on the left, a half-dozen chip-bottomed chairs, a
spinning-wheel, and a reel and jack, completed the appointments.
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