“Perhaps they would,” said Alma, “if we played gently and had kind thoughts about them.”
“Of course we should play gently,” said Ella. “We’re not small children any longer. We shall go to the high school in one year more. Oh, I want to go now. I want to be grown up. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps. Why do you want to?”
“One reason is so I can go up in the Fourth of July balloon. I’ve always wanted to, and I will if I ever have five dollars that I can spend just as I like. I suppose I shan’t ever ride in a swanboat, for I’m too old. But let’s go on with the history lesson. Perhaps we’ll find that some of the people in it are here. If they are, let’s pick some flowers and put on their graves.”
With this new inspiration the children roamed about the old cemetery, examining dates and inscriptions.
“Here’s one marked ‘Howe,’” said Ella, “and it says that he died in battle in 1778.”
“Maybe he was related to Admiral Howe,” Alma suggested.
“How he must have felt, then, to have his own uncle—I guess he was an uncle—fighting against the Americans,” said Ella. “Suppose it had been Washington who died in 1778?” she added thoughtfully.
“Then maybe we’d be under a king or a queen. How queer it would be to talk about ‘Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain and the United States of America.’”
“I don’t believe we’d be under a queen at all. Something would have been sure to happen.”