“If he is,” I said, “I hope his wife won’t know it, for she is probably worrying about him, and it would be discouraging to worry about a man who is romancing over a lost love!”
Mr. Kempwood agreed. “Forgotten Martha!” he said. “All apologies! He is thinking of her. . . . See him take a wallet out of his pocket and pretend to look at a map? Well, under that there’s a silhouette. He’s looking at that----”
I nodded, for I liked that better. “I’m sure he loved her,” I said. “Probably he looks back at his younger affair and says: ‘In truth, I was a young idiot, to think my heart did pound a merry tune for her, who now wears two chins where but one should be!’ ”
Mr. Kempwood liked that.
“What made him discouraged?” I asked; “anything in particular?”
“Yes,” answered Mr. Kempwood, “the day before some of his troops from Connecticut turned and fled in utter terror. The British had landed in New York, and our boys, hearing this, had let their imaginations get the best of them. . . . There were only sixty of the foe, but nothing could induce our poor soldiers to stand up to them. Horse-whippings (and they were whipped by everyone, from Washington down) had no effect; they simply turned and fled. . . . You know,” he said, with a meaning look at me, “imagination can make lots that isn’t worth notice grow very gruesome!”
I smiled and nodded. Then I looked down at my bracelet.
“The battle of Harlem Heights came somewhere along there,” he went on; “I don’t know quite when. But our soldiers fought well, after that one day of fright, and redeemed themselves. . . . The British, after that, for a little space, took the affair as a joke. And when they started out to fight one day, blew bugles to indicate that it was in the nature of a hunt. . . . But they didn’t do that more than once.”
“Was General Washington here very long?” I asked, as I looked up at the porch and seemed to see him.
“No,” Mr. Kempwood answered, “only thirty-three days. After that the British took possession. . . . When you think of what those old walls have seen and heard----” Mr. Kempwood paused. Then he stood up, smiled down at me, and I knew that history was over.