She was a brisk little woman of business, and all the affairs of her large estate came under her cognisance.

No pie was baked at Castlewood but her little finger was in it.

She set the maids to their spinning, she saw the kitchen wenches at their work, she trotted afield on her pony, and oversaw the overseers and the negro hands as they worked in the tobacco-and corn-fields.

If a slave was ill, she would go to his quarters in any weather, and doctor him with great resolution.

She had a book full of receipts after the old fashion, and a closet where she distilled waters and compounded elixirs, and a medicine-chest which was the terror of her neighbours.