“Not a royalist!” exclaimed Major Gordon, surprised out of his depression. And he added, after a pause for reflection. “Indeed, you must be mistaken. What grounds have you for your opinion?”
“Did you ever hear her say she was for the King?”
The Major thought awhile. He could, to his surprise, recall no such circumstance.
“Never!” he said at last.
“Haven’t you heerd her say that she was a patriot?”
Again Major Gordon reflected.
“I have,” he said, “but only in jest.”
“Only in a joke, you mean, I suppose,” answered Uncle Lawrence. “And don’t you know Miss Katie well enough to know, that she says many a true thing in that gay, joking way of hers? Have you ever heerd her make fun of the poor fellers in General Washington’s army, the Lord bless him! as she makes fun of the red coats and their dandy officers?”
Major Gordon was compelled to acknowledge, greatly to his own astonishment, that he never had. In fact a light began to break in upon him. He suspected that he had been in error all along, simply for having started with a fixed impression that Kate was a royalist, and having consequently viewed her acts and weighed her words under that delusion. Uncle Lawrence confirmed his opinion.
“I’ll tell you what it is,” said the veteran, with a triumphant chuckle, “you’re like what I was once, when I put on the preacher’s green spectacles, which he wore for his eyes; everything was sort of colored by the glasses; the sand looked as green as a meadow in spring, and the sky all over sickish-like, as if it had been on a spree, as they used to call it when I was a wild youngster. You’ve thought Miss Katie was a tory because her aunt was, and her cousin; but she’s as good a whig as Lady Washington herself; and what’s more, she’d as soon marry a monkey as one of them red coated captains,” and the old man snapped his fingers with a gesture of sovereign contempt.