“Not I,” Mrs. Weeks objected decidedly. “If you stay, so do I; but I insist that Betty and Lettice shall leave. It is what your husband would wish, Betty.”
“If you could make it convenient to leave to-morrow, I would be happy to be your escort,” Mr. Baldwin told them. Yet it was only after much protesting on Betty’s part that the safety of her precious baby became, at last, the inducement which decided her to go up to Baltimore under Mr. Baldwin’s care. Mrs. Tom Hopkins was there, ready to open her house to them, and glad enough to have her loneliness invaded by the cheery presence of a baby.
To Lettice, however, the house was too full of memories for her to feel other than depressed within its walls, and Patsey’s eager letters, urging her to come to her in Washington at last had weight even with Aunt Martha.
“The child looks pale and peaked,” she said. “She needs young company to cheer her up.”
“So she does,” Betty agreed. “She has been all these months with staid married people, like myself and my parents, and she needs girls of her own age.” Betty spoke sedately, as one whose youth had long past, but Aunt Martha quite approved. She objected to an approach to frivolity in married women. “Patsey still keeps up hope,” Betty went on. “I suppose you have had no word of Joe, Aunt Martha?”
“No, but I’ve had good news from my husband. At last we have something besides reverses on the Canada frontier.”
“And such glorious victories at sea! It makes one very proud of our little navy that has been so snubbed and scorned.”
“Proud indeed! We have some good patriots. I am lost in admiration over those Kentuckians. What an example their governor has set to the people of the country! There is a patriot for you.”
“And here’s another,” laughed Betty, patting Aunt Martha’s hand. “You aren’t much of a Federalist, Aunt Martha.”
“I am not, I confess. I am disgusted with all these squabbles about the administration, when the foe is at our very doors. Suppose we are taxed, we should have no money for the war, else; and to pretend it is unjust and as bad as the taxation of the colonies by England before the Revolution is ridiculous. Next there will be civil war, if this is not stopped. Massachusetts may go out of the Union if she chooses, but I’ll not go with her, dearly as I love my own state. And I venture to say that is the opinion of the greater part of her people. It is only the politicians who make all this ferment.”