“Just think of it! And that wee little army, half-starved and poorly clothed, held in check the thousands of Cornwallis! No wonder the orators grow eloquent over our forefathers, is it, Marie?”
“But about Kate? Did that horrid old Tory of an uncle shut her up in her room after that?”
“Take care, Miss Marie, that ‘horrid old Tory of an uncle’ was a distant relative of ours.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean to say anything against your relations, Mr. Walter; but then everybody knows you aren’t a bit like him, if you are a tease!”
“No,” Kate goes on, “they didn’t shut her up in her room, but she was treated very coolly all around the board, and as for her uncle, I believe he never spoke to her again. What made him particularly indignant was, that the British prisoners would insist that he was at the bottom of it all, and had set the trap for them himself. They had reason to be suspicious, for in that section one never could be certain who were Tories and who were not, so many of the people wavered in their opinions, favoring the royal cause one day and the rebels the next. Well, to wind up my story, Kate was so unhappy there, that she went to live with an aunt in Charleston till some two or three years after, when the war was all over, and she married—”
“Oh, wait, let me guess who!—the American Captain, now, didn’t she? How romantic! Then he was your great-great-grandfather!”
“Yes, and they came North, and lived and died right where Uncle Robert lives now—in the same house, only it has been altered several times since.”
The mention of “Uncle Robert” reminds Harry to ask if Kate has had any more letters lately from her little correspondent. Whereupon she produces this one, which she received to-day!
“Dear Cozen Kate and Walter:—to-moros the forth but my Firecrackers are all used up alreddy but I don’t care I don’t feal much like sellibrating ennyway you see Dick Deen and Jimmy Jeffers an me we thot wed have sum fun so we toock a hunting horn with sum powder in it an emptyd it onto a stone an set a match to it but it didnt go off so i run up to see what was the matter and pop off it went rite into my face tel yoo it made me hop an everryboddy screemd an run for the Docter an he cum an sed it wood get well after a while and then he an papa both giggld but i coodnt see whare the fun was nor mama eether she sed i must rite an tel you about it it wood divurt my mind but to be careful about my Speling an the rest so I was.
Affexshuntly