"I wish you could persuade Martine to go with us this afternoon."
"Go with us?" returned Amy. "Why, of course. Mrs. Airton expects her."
"I don't quite understand it, but she says that she does not care to go, and in fact she has engaged a horse for a ride."
"On horseback! Who is going with her?"
"No one. She says that it's perfectly safe for her to go alone, and though I tried to dissuade her, I can see that she is determined to have her own way."
"I suppose that's what they mean by Martine's being difficult to manage. Thus far I had thought her remarkably amiable."
"There's one thing about it," rejoined Mrs. Redmond, "it may be better to let her have her way this time than to have her take it without our permission. I have learned that the horse she is to have is perfectly safe,—so safe in fact, that I fear she'll find it rather a bore,—and she says that she'll only go over the road where we drove the other afternoon, every step of which she knows; but I must say that I regret her discourtesy to Mrs. Airton, for her refusal of her invitation must seem very strange. Why do you suppose she is unwilling to go?"
"I'm afraid it's because she and Priscilla had a little disagreement this morning. It was so slight that I wouldn't have attached any importance to it, but apparently Martine has taken it more to heart."
When Priscilla learned of Martine's change of plan, she made no comment, believing in her inmost heart that Martine had taken this way to show her real distaste to those whom she called Priscilla's "Tory friends." When Mrs. Redmond and the other girls reached Mrs. Airton's early in the afternoon, they found their friend Mrs. Gray there, and one or two young girls of the neighborhood. For a while they sat in the low-studded sitting-room where Priscilla had looked at the commission signed by Sir Henry Clinton. Their conversation did not concern itself entirely with the past, but there were many questions about the present, of Nova Scotia in general and Annapolis in particular, that the Americans were anxious to ask and the others glad to answer.
Later, however, they got back to the subject in which Priscilla was especially interested,—the Loyalist refugees and the hard times they experienced. Eunice had shown her, among other things, her great-great-grandfather's silver breastplate, with his monogram and a crown finely engraved upon it, and one or two of his letters, the paper yellow with age and the ink faded.