I smiled at Mr. Kempwood and said I liked that, for I had, a lot.
“What did she have on?” I asked.
“Um----” he muttered, and frowned. “Stumped!” he confessed, and laughed. “I suppose she wore a cap?” he continued, “for they did at about twenty-seven in those days. And a sky-blue satin frock, all quilted and made very tight around the waist. Fitted, you know; low-necked and with a lace ruffle which fell over her shoulders? Would that do, Nat?”
I liked his calling me Nat. I told him so. It made me think of uncle, and I told him that too.
“Well,” he said, “I like your liking it, but I don’t like my reminding you of your uncle!” And then he poked around in the gravel at his feet with his cane. He seemed to be thinking pretty hard, and I didn’t interrupt him.
After a while he asked if I thought thirty-three very old, and I said I didn’t. Although I really did. But I judged he was thirty-three, and he is. However, I have come to know that age is misleading, for he is quite as young as I am inside. The years have only added niceness to him.
After another silence, I asked him to go on, and he did.
“There’s a group on the porch,” he said, “and in front of this stands a man called Washington. He is staring off toward New York, which is a huge city of some thirty thousand souls. There is a tired sag to his shoulders, and discouragement shows in every line of his figure. . . . He rubs his hand across his eyes--see? Probably he hasn’t slept well, for worries will make even a good bed hard. . . . He has been made Commander-in-Chief of the Army recently. It seems John Adams urged this at the second Continental Congress in Philadelphia, in 1775.
“The way things are going makes him unhappy--nervous. . . . True, he had driven the British from Boston, which they had held about two years, and they were also whipped out of North and South Carolina. But now they are turning their attention to New York, the Hudson River, and Lake Champlain. . . . Washington has guessed that they hope to divide the North and the South, and so he has mustered troops and hurried them here. . . . It has been a military headquarters before, and so he does not have to ask permission for its use from Mrs. Roger Morris. That might embarrass him, for it was said that he once entertained rather tender sentiments toward that lady. . . . I wonder if he’s thinking of her now? Do you think so, Nat?”
Mr. Kempwood stared toward the porch, and I did too.