“I have that too,” I said.
“Then I suppose that we had better be going,” she answered. “But perhaps I ought to explain,” she continued, as she stood in the doorway with her back to the light. “General Marion could not take me with him. He is making for the Pee Dee and the great marshes, and hopes to be on the other side of Lynch’s creek by night. He took Tom but he said that I should embarrass him.”
“I see.”
“He thought that you would perhaps escort me as far as Camden,” she continued soberly. “I have friends there who will receive me for the night and send me home to-morrow by Rocky Mount and the fords of the Catawba. He fancied that I had better avoid Winnsboro’.”
“I agree with him,” I said.
“I might be arrested, he fancied?”
“It is not impossible,” I assented dryly. I felt that something was closing in on me and stopping all the sources of speech. This ordered plan, this business-like arrangement—I was to be of use to the end it seemed. Just of use! I strove desperately to resist the thought and yet I could not.
“Then if there is nothing else,” she said slowly, “we might—be going, I suppose?”
“I suppose so,” I answered heavily. And I turned the horses round.
“Or—do you think,” she suggested uncertainly, “that we had better eat something before we start?”