They were taken to the landing by Mr. Milburn and the young rector, and
there, as the steamboat approached, Tilghman said:
"Rhoda, your uncle has consented. He wishes us to marry. I ask you,
before all of them, to consider my proposal while you are gone, and come
home with your reply."
The impetuous girl threw her arms around him and kissed him in silence,
and, covering her face with her veil, awaited in uncontrollable tears
the steamboat that was to carry her to the mightier world she had never
seen, beyond the bay.
After she reached the steamer her stillness and grief continued, and
going to bed that night she turned up her face, discolored by tears, for
Vesta to kiss her, like a child, and faltered:
"Aunty, don't think I have no principle. Indeed, I have some."
* * * * *
Annapolis, half a century the senior of Baltimore, and the first town to
take root in all the Chesapeake land, was now almost one hundred and
fifty years old, and the stern monument of Cromwell's protectorate. Its
handful of expelled Puritans from Virginia, compelled to organize their
county under the name of the Romanist, Anne Arundel, unfurled the
standard of the Commonwealth, reddened with a tyrant king's blood,
against the invading army of Lord Baltimore, and, shouting "God is our
strength: fall on, men!" annihilated feudal Maryland, never to revive;
and, after King William's similar revolution in England, "Providence
town" took his queen sister's name, _Anna_polis, like Princess Anne
across the bay.
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