“Good!” cried Lettice. “Aunt Martha, I love you for that. I wish Rhoda and her father could hear you. I suppose Mr. Kendall still adheres to his opinions.”
“My brother? Yes, he is blind to everything but his resentment toward the administration, I am sorry to say.”
“Aunt Martha certainly does improve with age,” said Betty to Lettice, as she was helping the latter to pack her trunk. “She speaks as tenderly of Cousin Joe as if he were her own son, and she is perfectly devoted to the baby. Poor Cousin Joe! I wonder where he is?”
“Patsey declares he is in some prison, and I don’t doubt but that she is right,” said Lettice, lifting the cover of her bandbox to see if her best hat were safely inside.
“I hope, then, he is not in that dreadful Dartmoor Prison,” said Betty. “I declare, Lettice, I forgot to ask Aunt Martha about Mr. Clinton. I wonder where he is?”
Lettice gave her head a little toss. “It needn’t concern us where he is.”
“You’re well off with the old love, aren’t you, dear?” Betty said. “And as for the new, I’ll warrant the way to Washington will not seem very long with him as escort. Yet, I don’t see, with all the fine fellows here in Baltimore, why you couldn’t have chosen one nearer home. You are bound to be a Yankee, at all hazards, it seems.”
Lettice laughed. “I haven’t chosen any one, Sister Betty, and it is all very silly to take it for granted. Why, honey, I may have a dozen fancies yet.”
“I don’t believe it. You and Ellicott Baldwin are cut out for each other, I must say, though I oughtn’t to, you little monkey, for I don’t want you to leave your own state, and go live up there. However will you manage to subsist on baked beans, I don’t know.”
“Goosey! Am I such a poor stick that I can’t cook what I like? And, besides, I could take one of our own servants with me,—Speery, for instance,—and teach her.”