“I’d like to see any one manage a vessel better than you or Uncle Tom, and even Brother William or Brother James, and Cousin Tom can do anything with one of our clippers. Why, they are as much at home on the water as on the land.”
“To be sure. There are no better seamen anywhere than America can produce, and we can show fight. At all events, daughter, we do not mean to be bullied, and though New England has little mind to help us, we’ll make our fight on righteous grounds of complaint.”
“But won’t our trade be spoiled? Rhoda says so.”
“You let me talk to Rhoda,” said Mr. Hopkins, rising, “and leave politics alone, little one. Run along and help your aunt.”
“She doesn’t want any help, and she doesn’t like me to be in the kitchen. Father, dear, when shall I be old enough to keep house for you, and have Aunt Dorky, and Lutie, and all of them for our servants?”
He put his arm around her caressingly. “We cannot think of such things till this war matter is settled, my pet. I must be on hand to serve if need be, and I couldn’t leave my little girl alone, you know.”
“I wish I could fight,” said Lettice, solemnly.
Her father smiled. “Pray heaven that you’ll never see fight,” he said.
But Lettice was soon to see the first effects of war, for the following evening Rhoda’s father came in and pulled a paper out of his pocket as he sat down to the table. “What do you think of this, Tom?” he said. “There’s a level-headed man for you!” and he read: “We mean to use every constitutional argument and every legal means to render as odious and suspicious to the American people, as they deserve to be, the patrons and contrivers of this highly impolitic and destructive war, in the full persuasion that we shall be supported and ultimately applauded by nine-tenths of our countrymen, and that our silence would be treason to them.”
“What do I think of that?” said Mr. Hopkins, “I think that Mr. Hanson is laying up trouble for himself, for I suppose that is the Federal Republican you have there.”