It was Mistress Arnold who ran across the orchard and into the kitchen, clasping the trembling little lass in her arms. “We saw the red coats from Mistress Brewster’s window and knew that they had been here. But you are unharmed—and the guns—the powder?”
“I spoiled my sampler, mother,” Patience gave a sobbing laugh as she held up her work with the crookedly stitched ending, and the unfinished name. “It is as you feared. I started my name too near the border and there is no room to finish it, but”—she held out the precious bit of iron, “here is the key.”
[The Star Lady]
From Tabitha Wells, aged ten, at Philadelphia, in the year 1776, to her cousin John Bradford, at Boston—a letter.
“My Dear John:
“It does seem more than a month ago that I said good-bye to you, and you took your long journey home again. Your visit was a bright spot in these troubled times. Do you remember the pair of robins that we watched building their nest in grandmother’s old apple tree. They have raised their brood of young ones now and the little birds have flown away. The old birds still live in the apple tree, though, and each day at sunrise and sunset they sing as if all the world were gay instead of fallen into this sad Revolution. And the early apples are as red as the coat of a British soldier and are dropping all over the grass of the garden.
“Grandmother gave me a pewter canister that used to hold tea—she knew it would be a long time before we have any more tea to put in it. I have filled it full of apples, one layer of fruit and then one of leaves to keep them from bruising. It is as sweet smelling as our garden, John, where you played with me so many happy days this spring. It is for you; the apples shall go to you by the next packet.
“But here I am writing you of such everyday matters as robins and apples, and wasting paper which is rising in price, and using up one of my grandfather’s best quill pens and his ink stone. I had other things in mind to tell you, John, when I started this letter—things of far greater importance.