"Patty knows about Boston," she said. "She was a little girl there. But she doesn't like it very much."
Mistress Kent came in with some cake and a home brew of beer, and asked politely after Mrs. Henry. Then Andrew rose to go.
"I cannot take thee just yet," he said, twining the little fingers about one of his. "But the time will soon pass. And I shall be likely to come in on market day once in a while, if I do not make bad bargains!" with a grave sort of smile. "Then I shall see thee, and take home a good account."
"Thou mayst indeed do that," said Mistress Janice, with high dignity. "She learns many things in this great house."
He stooped and kissed her, and she somehow felt sorry to say good-by.
"I suppose," exclaimed his father that evening, "that the child has been tutored out of her simple ways, and is aping the great lady with fine feathers and all that!"
"She is not much changed and plainly dressed, and seems not easily to forget her old life, asking about many things."
"My brother Philemon's intentions will be sorely thwarted. He was called upon to give up his son, but I am not sure I should have done it for worldly gain. It was going back to the bondage we were glad to escape. And he had counted on other sons to uphold the faith. But the mother was only half-hearted, and the child will always be in peril."
Andrew Henry wondered a little about this question of faith. He had heard strange talk in the market place to-day. The Puritans of Boston had persecuted and banished the Friends, and the Friends here could hardly tolerate the royalist proclivities of the Episcopalians. If war should come, would one have to choose between his country and his faith?