"Don't you give yours a holiday up in New England? I thought you had negro servants as well as we?"
"So we do; you know that Miranda is the daughter of our old cook, Chloe. She came here with Clarissa when she was a bride; oh, we have a few negro servants in dear New England, Peter, but not so many as here. Gulian told me that there are some three thousand slaves owned in the city and its environs. But our negroes go to church and pray; they do not dance, and I know Chloe would be shocked with Miranda's flippant ways. She was ever opposed to dancing."
"Don't be prim, Betty."
"I—prim?"—and Betty went off into a shout of girlish laughter, as she flung a pine needle at Peter, who dodged it successfully; "that I live to hear myself called what I have so often dubbed Pamela. Fie, Peter, let Miranda dance if she will; I should love to see her. It would be far more amusing than cards."
"Betty," said Peter, edging nearer her and lowering his voice to a whisper, "I heard that the Sons of Liberty had another placard up near the Vly Market last night, and that Sir Henry Clinton is in great wrath because they are growing daring again. My! wouldn't I just like to see one of them; but they say (so Pompey told me) that they are all around us in different disguises. That's why they're so difficult to catch; it would go hard with them if the Hessians lay hands on the author of the placards."
"But they will not; I heard Gulian say only last night that the cleverness with which the placards are prepared and placed was wonderful. Who tells you these things, Peter? Do have a care, for we are under Gulian's roof, and he would be very angry if he knew that your and my sympathies are all on the side of the Whigs."
"Oh, I hear things," murmured Peter evasively. Then whispering in Betty's ear, "Did you ever hear Kitty speak of Billy the fiddler?"
"There's no one within hearing," said Betty, as she finished her twelfth wreath and laid it carefully on the floor beside her cricket. "Get the other big branch outside the door, and sit down here close by me while you pull the twigs off; then you can tell me safely, for Clarissa is sleeping, and she will call me when she wakes. Of course I never heard of the man you mention."
Peter threw back his howl in a prolonged chuckle, as he followed Betty's instructions and edged his cricket close to her elbow.
"Man!—well, he's more like a monkey than anything. He only comes to my shoulder, and yet he's old enough to be my father."