Primrose courtesied again, her eyes shining with lustrousness that was near to tears.
"I should almost have danced up and down and clapped my hands, or else fallen at her feet and kissed her pretty hands if she had said that about Allin," declared Polly afterward. "Oh, it was soul-stirring, and the belles stood envying you, but some of them have blown hot and blown cold, and were ready to dance with Whig and Tory alike. And I wanted to say that you were too patriotic to go up to New York and be merry with your brother. Then I bethought me he was on the wrong side. Such a splendid fellow, too, Primrose; skating like the wind, and such a dancer, and with so many endearing ways. Child, how can you resist him?"
"I cannot be a turncoat for the dearest love."
"Andrew Henry should have been your brother. He looks more like that grand old portrait of your father than his own son does," declared Polly, and some inexplicable feeling sent the scarlet waves to the fair face of Primrose.
Busy enough the women were, and on many of the shirts was the name of the maker. Primrose begged that Patty's name might be put on their dozen, and Janice Kent consented hers should be used.
"For Primrose is such an odd, fanciful name, and it seems as if it belonged just to my own self and my dear mother," the child said, and Madam Wetherill respected the delicacy.
Mrs. Bache, Franklin's daughter, wrote to Washington that there were twenty-five hundred shirts, the result of nimble and patriotic fingers; and, she added, "we wish them to be worn with as much pleasure as they were made."
Philemon Nevitt was indeed angry at his sister's refusal, but as he was in no sense her guardian, he could not compel her. Some weeks elapsed before he wrote again. It was a hard, cold winter, and if full of discouragements for the Continentals was not especially inspiriting for the British.
There had been something of a revolt among the Philadelphia troops at Morristown, who thought, having served their three years' enlistment, they should be allowed to return to their homes. Sir Henry Clinton, mistaking the spirit of the trouble, at once offered to take them under the protection of the British government, clothe and feed them and require no service of them, unless it was voluntarily proffered.
"See, comrades," exclaimed one of the leaders; "we have been taken for traitors! Let us show General Clinton that the American Army can furnish but one Arnold, and that America has no truer patriots than we. But if we fight, we should not be compelled to starve on the field, nor have our wives and children starving at home."