"Englishmen move so slowly."
"Of course. All the able Englishmen are on this side of the Atlantic. Lord! how many from the other side could be changed for the one Great One on this side. What do you think? It was my silk, lace, ribbons and fallals Harry Bradley was taking across the river. The little vanities were for my old friend Martha. I am sorry she missed them."
Neil looked at her with an admiring smile. "How do you manage?" he asked.
"I have arranged my politics long since, and quite to my satisfaction. So has Jacobus. He left New York flying the English flag, but the ocean has a wonderful influence on him; his political ideas grow large and free there; he becomes—a different man. Society has the same effect on me. When I see American women put below that vulgar Mrs. Reidesel——"
"Oh, no, Madame!"
"Oh, yes, sir. In the fashionable world we are all naught unless Mrs. General Reidesel figures before us; then, perhaps, we may acquire a kind of value. See how she is queening it in General Tryron's fine mansion. And then, this foreign mercenary, Knyphausen, put over American officers and American citizens! It is monstrous! Not to be endured! I only bear it by casting my heart and eyes to the Jersey Highlands. There our natural ruler waits and watches; here, we wait and watch, and some hour, it must be, our hopes shall touch God's purposes for us. For that hour we secretly pray. It is not far off." And Neil understood, as he met her shining eyes and radiant smile, that there are times when faith may indeed have all the dignity of works.
Then the young man, inexpressibly cheered and strengthened, went rapidly home; and when Madame heard her son's steps on the garden walk she knew that something pleasant had happened to him. And it is so often that fortune, as well as misfortune, goes where there is more of it that Neil was hardly surprised to see an extraordinarily cheerful group around an unusually cheerful fireside when he opened the parlor door. The Elder, smiling and serene, sat in his arm-chair, with his finger-tips placidly touching each other. Madame's voice had something of its old confident ring in it, and Maria, with heightened color and visible excitement, sat between her grandparents, an unmistakable air of triumph on her face.
"Come to the fire, Neil," said his mother, making a place for his chair. "Come and warm yoursel'; and we'll hae a cup o' tea in ten or fifteen minutes."
"How cheerful the blazing logs are," he answered. "Is it some festival? You are as delightfully extravagant as Madame Jacobus. Oh, if the old days were back again, mother!"
"They will come, Neil. But wha or what will bring us back the good days we hae lost forever out o' our little lives while we tholed this weary war? However, there is good news, or at least your father thinks so. Maria has had an offer o' marriage, and her not long turned eighteen years auld, and from an English lord, and your father has made a bonfire o'er the matter, and I've nae doubt he would have likit to illuminate the house as weel."