"'Thursday'!" she repeated. "That's two whole days to wait! Why can't I go to-morrow?" she said anxiously.
Mrs. Pennell looked at Ruth in surprise. Never before had she known her little daughter to whine, or seem to want her own way more than anything else.
"What is the matter, Ruth? I thought you would be so glad that your Aunt Clara had persuaded me to let you go so soon. If you say anything about going before Thursday we shall give up the visit altogether," she said.
Ruth hardly knew what to say or do. It seemed to the little girl that her delay in starting for Barren Hill meant the possibility of the capture of Lafayette. She was tempted to tell her mother the reason for wishing to start at once, but she was sure Mrs. Pennell would promptly forbid her carrying out her plan to visit Valley Forge.
Ruth managed to thank her mother for permission to go on Thursday, and to say that she would be sure and see Farmer Withely and give him the message the next morning, and then went back to her seat in the garden. She had just taken up Cecilia, when the garden gate was pushed open and Winifred came running up the path.
"Gilbert says he is ashamed of me!" declared Winifred, "and of you, and of Betty Hastings, for going to Southwark yesterday," and she looked at Ruth a little fearfully, as if expecting her friend to be quite overcome by Gilbert's disapproval.
"I don't care if he is," was Ruth's surprising reply. "I am glad I went, and I always shall be glad. And perhaps some day Gilbert will be glad too."
"Why, Ruth Pennell!" exclaimed Winifred.
"You tell him just what I say," insisted Ruth, beginning to feel more cheerful at the thought of Gilbert's surprise when he should discover that she had saved Lafayette from capture through her visit to Southwark. After all, Thursday was only the day after to-morrow, she reflected, and the English were too much occupied in their welcome to Sir Henry Clinton to start off to capture the young Frenchman. Besides that encouraging thought Winifred had brought over a box filled with beads. They were wonderful beads—blue, all shades of blue, and sparkling red beads, and beads of shining green, and white beads as clear as dew-drops.
"You may pick out those you like best," said the generous Winnie, "enough to make you a necklace, and one for Cecilia, too," and the two little girls were soon happily occupied with the beads, and Ruth forgot all about her fears lest her warning should come too late. But when Winifred jumped up saying that it was time for her to go home, Ruth remembered that she had not told Winnie that she was to go to Barren Hill on Thursday.