“Since he is your cousin, perhaps I can persuade him to exchange places with me, if you will allow.”
“Oh! ye-es,” Lettice replied, trying to cover her first exclamation of eagerness by a little show of reluctance. “If you like, you can settle it with Cousin Joe. I don’t care.”
Her uncle was watching her amusedly. “Don’t go over to the enemy, Letty,” he said as she passed him.
“No fear of that,” she replied, laughing, but with a little fluttering at heart. What was the use of a girl’s bothering about politics, after all, she thought; even James had said that perhaps a war was not right, and—yes, of course she was what her father was, but that didn’t mean she could not have friends on the other side. Look at Mr. Kendall and her Uncle Tom, they were brothers-in-law and friends, yet they didn’t agree. So she put all disturbing questions aside, and danced her prettiest with this new gallant, feeling that she was the envy of the older girls, for no one was led out more gracefully than she, though all the neighborhood was famous for its good dancers. The tobacco barn with its big floor was a fine place for a dance, and the courtseyings and dippings and bowings went on till all hours. The fashion of round dances had not yet reached the place, and more stately measures were used.
“Across there, where you see the lights twinkling, is Annapolis,” Lettice told Mr. Clinton on their homeward voyage. She had turned a cold shoulder on Birket Dean, and was listening with evident pleasure to the newcomer’s low-spoken words. “It was from there the Constitution sailed, only last month; we saw her go out. I wonder what will be the next news,” she said in one of the pauses of the conversation.
“Still troubling your pretty head with such matters?” returned Mr. Clinton, smiling at her. “Rather let us speak of yonder moon sailing so serenely across the heavens.” And he began to quote poetry to her, till she did indeed forget war’s alarms.
Lounging at Rhoda’s feet, James every now and then turned his curly head toward the slim girl figure. She was very kind to him on this homeward trip, and they did not once get into an argument.
Joe and Patsey sat suspiciously close together. They were both very quiet. “If I were going to be married at Christmas, I wonder if I should find no more to talk about than Joe and Patsey,” Lettice thought. But she did not know that the wedding day was an indefinite matter, and that Joe had just informed his sweetheart that he should, in a few days, take command of one of his father’s clippers, and that his business would be to harass English vessels whenever he could. “I’d like to meet that wretched thief who stole Pat Flynn,” he said; “I’d make him suffer for it.” But Patsey was silent. Privateering for her Joe! The uncertainty of the sea was bad enough, but add to that the dangers of warfare, and it was too much. The girl’s heart was very full; she could only let her hand lie in Joe’s strong clasp, and be thankful for the present, for the future seemed suddenly to slip into an impenetrable cloud.
At first Joe had urged an immediate marriage, but Patsey shook her head. “You’ll be back by Christmas?” she faltered.
“Surely, unless—” His clasp on Patsey’s hand tightened, and he had no further words.