He acknowledged that I was right in all this. 'But then, dear mother,'
says he, 'you shall be as near me as you can.' So he took me with him
on horseback to a plantation next to his own, and where I was as well
entertained as I could have been in his own. Having left me there he
went away home, telling me we would talk of the main business the next
day; and having first called me his aunt, and given a charge to the
people, who it seems were his tenants, to treat me with all possible
respect. About two hours after he was gone, he sent me a maid-servant
and a Negro boy to wait on me, and provisions ready dressed for my
supper; and thus I was as if I had been in a new world, and began
secretly now to wish that I had not brought my Lancashire husband from
England at all.
However, that wish was not hearty neither, for I loved my Lancashire
husband entirely, as indeed I had ever done from the beginning; and he
merited from me as much as it was possible for a man to do; but that by
the way.
The next morning my son came to visit me again almost as soon as I was
up. After a little discourse, he first of all pulled out a deerskin
bag, and gave it me, with five-and-fifty Spanish pistoles in it, and
told me that was to supply my expenses from England, for though it was
not his business to inquire, yet he ought to think I did not bring a
great deal of money out with me, it not being usual to bring much money
into that country. Then he pulled out his grandmother's will, and read
it over to me, whereby it appeared that she had left a small
plantation, as he called it, on York River, that is, where my mother
lived, to me, with the stock of servants and cattle upon it, and given
it in trust to this son of mine for my use, whenever he should hear of
my being alive, and to my heirs, if I had any children, and in default
of heirs, to whomsoever I should by will dispose of it; but gave the
income of it, till I should be heard of, or found, to my said son; and
if I should not be living, then it was to him, and his heirs.
This plantation, though remote from him, he said he did not let out,
but managed it by a head-clerk (steward), as he did another that was
his father's, that lay hard by it, and went over himself three or four
times a year to look after it. I asked him what he thought the
plantation might be worth. He said, if I would let it out, he would
give me about #60 a year for it; but if I would live on it, then it
would be worth much more, and, he believed, would bring me in about
#150 a year. But seeing I was likely either to settle on the other
side of the bay, or might perhaps have a mind to go back to England
again, if I would let him be my steward he would manage it for me, as
he had done for himself, and that he believed he should be able to send
me as much tobacco to England from it as would yield me about #100 a
year, sometimes more.