The little girl thinks it would be dreadful not to have a country, but her mind is quite chaotic on the subject. She is glad, however, to have been on the winning side.
Nearly every day Uncle David took her out driving. They saw the old house on the hill in a half-hidden, woody section where the family had to live until the new house was built. They went round the battlefield, but sixty years of peace had made great changes, and the next fifty years was to see a beautiful town and many-storied palaces all about. She dipped into the history of New Amsterdam again and began to understand it better, though she did mistrust that Mr. Dederich Knickerbocker now and then "made fun," not unlike her father.
The visit came to an end quite too soon, grandmother thought, and she was very sorry to part with the little girl. She thought she would try and come down when the fall work was done, and she gave Hanny only four blocks of patchwork, for if she went to school there wouldn't be much time to sew.
They stopped at Yonkers two days and picked up the boys, who were brown and rosy. Aunt Crete was much better and did not have to go about with her face tied up. She said there was no place like Yonkers, after all. Retty seemed happy and jolly, but there was a new girl in the kitchen, for Aunt Mary had gone to live with her children. George said he should come down a while when the crops were in.
School commenced the 1st of September sharp. It was hot, of course. Summer generally does lap over. The boys who had shouted themselves hoarse with joy when school closed, made the street and the playground ring with delight again. If they were not so fond of studying they liked the fun and good-fellowship. And when they marched up and down the long aisles singing:
"Hail Columbia, happy land;
Hail ye heroes, heaven-born band.
Who fought and bled in freedom's cause!"
you could feel assured another generation of patriots was being raised for some future emergency. Oh, what throats and lungs they had!
Mrs. Underhill had been around to see Mrs. Craven, and liked her very well indeed. So the little girl was to go to school with Josie and Tudie Dean.
Some new people had come in the street two doors below. Among the members was a little girl of seven, the child of the oldest son, and a large girl of fourteen or so, two young ladies, one of whom was teaching school, and the other making artificial flowers in a factory down-town, and two sons. The eldest one was connected with a newspaper, and was in quite poor health. His wife, the little girl's mother, had been dead some years. The child was rather pale and thin, with large, dark eyes, and a face too old for her years and rather pathetic. And when Mrs. Whitney came in a few days later to inquire where Mrs. Underhill sent her little girl to school, she decided to let her grandchild go to Mrs. Craven's also.
"She's quite a delicate little thing and takes after her mother. I tell my son, she wants to company with other children and not sit around nursing the cat. But Ophelia, that's my daughter who teaches down-town, where we used to live, says the public school is no place for her. And your little girl seems so nice and quiet like."