Just beyond the farmhouse which Lieutenant Hillhouse had pointed out as his temporary quarters stood a low, wooden structure, with a lean-to in the rear, and there Caesar drew up his tired horses. A rather cross-looking spinster stood in the door of the house, and as Betty and Mrs. Seymour alighted she said snappishly:—
"I don't own much room, as I told your men, Mister Lieutenant, but so long as you're not Hessians I'm willing to open my door for you. It won't be for long, will it?"
"Oh, no," replied Mrs. Seymour, with her pretty, gracious smile, "we are simply in need of a night's lodging. I think we have food enough in our hampers, and if you can give us hot milk I have coffee ready for making."
"I don't begrudge you nothing," said the woman in a softened tone, as Betty bade her a pleasant good-day, "but it's a poor place, anyhow," gazing up at the bare rafters, "and as I live here all alone I have to be precious careful of my few things."
"But it so neat and clean," said Betty, pulling a three-legged stool toward the fire, and surveying the recently scrubbed floor; "we are cold and weary, and you are very good to take us in."
Evidently the woman was amenable to politeness, for she bustled around and insisted upon making the coffee, which Caesar produced in due time from his hamper under the box-seat, and she laid a cloth on the pine-wood table, and at last, after disappearing for a few minutes into the darkness of a small inner room, reappeared with three silver spoons and two forks in her hand, which she laid carefully down beside the pewter plates on the table with an air of pride as she remarked, addressing no one in particular:—
"The forks was my grandmother's, and my father fetched the spoons from a voyage he made on the Spanish main, and he always said they was made of real Spanish dollars."
Thereupon Mrs. Seymour and Betty fell to admiring the queer-looking articles (which from their workmanship were really worthy of admiration), and the spinster relaxed her severe air sufficiently to accept a cup of the coffee they were drinking. And then Mrs. Seymour induced her to give consent that Caesar should have a shake-down in a corner of the kitchen, and although the bed which Betty and the pretty matron had to share was hard, it was clean, and the pillows soft, and they slept soundly and well amid their rough surroundings, and, to confess the truth, enjoyed the novelty of the situation.
Lieutenant Hillhouse aroused them early in the morning by a message; and as Mrs. Seymour was not ready to receive him, Betty ran out and met him at the door.
"You look so fresh and bright that I am sure your night spent upon the roadside has not harmed you," said the officer, bidding her good-morning. "I am off at once, as I carry an order to General Wolcott for quartermaster's stores in Litchfield. What shall I say to your father for you?"