"I suppose so;" flushing.
The delinquent distillers had been summoned to Philadelphia and had refused to go.
"This is our very living," declared grandad, who was one of the most fiery insurgents. "Then they will tax our grain, our crops of all kinds. A king could do no worse! What did I tell you about these men! Why, we'll have to emigrate t'other side of the Mississippi and start a new town. That's all we get for our labor and hard work."
"I ought to have waited until this thing was settled," Ned said rather ruefully, studying Daffodil's face. "But I had hard work to coax father, and when he consented I rushed off at once. He thinks there's going to be fortunes in this iron business, and Archie won't be worth shucks at it. He hates it as much as I do, but he's all for books, and getting his living by his brains. Maybe he'll be a lawyer."
Daffodil flushed. She held Archie's secret.
"You don't like it," Ned began when he had persuaded her to walk a little way with him. "You said once you didn't like soldiering. Yet it is a noble profession, and I'm not going to stay down at the bottom of the line."
"No," with a sweet reluctance as if she was sorry to admit it. "It seems cruel to me, why men should like to kill each other."
"They don't like it in the way of enjoyment, but do their duty. And they are for the protection of the homes, the women and children. We may have another Indian raid; we have some"—then he paused, he was going to say, "some French to clear out," but refrained. The French still held some desirable western points.
"Father talks of the war occasionally, and mother shivers and says—'My heart would have broken if I had known that!' And to be away three years or more, never knowing if one was alive!"
No, she wouldn't do for a soldier's wife. And Archie had prefigured himself a bachelor; he really had nothing to fear there, only would she not take more interest in his brother? There were other young fellows in the town, but not many of her kind. Well, he would wait—she seemed quite like a child yet.