“Not blood in the clouds!” echoed the housekeeper. “Yes, that there has, often, and comets with fiery, smoking tails. Didn’t people see armed men in the heavens, the year the war began? And, the night before the battle of the Plains, wasn’t there thunder, like the cannon themselves? Ah! Miss Fanny, I’m fearful that no good can follow rebellion against the Lord’s anointed!”
“These events are certainly dreadful,” returned Frances, “and enough to sicken the stoutest heart. But what can be done, Katy? Gallant and independent men are unwilling to submit to oppression; and I am fearful that such scenes are but too common in war.”
“If I could but see anything to fight about,” said Katy, renewing her walk as the young lady proceeded, “I shouldn’t mind it so much. ’Twas said the king wanted all the tea for his own family, at one time; and then again, that he meant the colonies should pay over to him all their earnings. Now this is matter enough to fight about—for I’m sure that no one, however he may be lord or king, has a right to the hard earnings of another. Then it was all contradicted, and some said Washington wanted to be king himself; so that, between the two, one doesn’t know which to believe.”
“Believe neither—for neither is true. I do not pretend to understand, myself, all the merits of this war, Katy; but to me it seems unnatural, that a country like this should be ruled by another so distant as England.”
“So I have heard Harvey say to his father, that is dead and in his grave,” returned Katy, approaching nearer to the young lady, and lowering her voice. “Many is the good time that I’ve listened to them talking, when all the neighborhood was asleep; and such conversations, Miss Fanny, that you can have no idea on! Well, to say the truth, Harvey was a mystified body, and he was like the winds in the good book; no one could tell whence he came, or whither he went.”
Frances glanced her eye at her companion with an apparent desire to hear more.
“There are rumors abroad relative to the character of Harvey,” she said, “that I should be sorry were true.”
“’Tis a disparagement, every word on’t,” cried Katy, vehemently. “Harvey had no more dealings with Beelzebub than you or I had. I’m sure if Harvey had sold himself, he would take care to be better paid; though, to speak the truth, he was always a wasteful and disregardful man.”
“Nay, nay,” returned the smiling Frances, “I have no such injurious suspicion of him; but has he not sold himself to an earthly prince—one too much attached to the interests of his native island to be always just to this country?”
“To the king’s majesty!” replied Katy. “Why, Miss Fanny, your own brother that’s in jail serves King George.”