“I do,” answered Peggy shortly. She had dismounted, and was letting her pony graze while she awaited Robert’s return. A slight regret that she had offered to let this Quakeress be her mother’s companion assailed her.
“WHERE IS THEE GOING?”
“And was thee not punished for it?” Truelove Davis was regarding her with a curious steadiness of gaze that Peggy found extremely irksome. If she would but remove that riding mask, she thought, she could talk to her better. “Did the friends bear in silence that thee and thine should depart from their peaceful practices?”
“They read us out of meeting,” replied Peggy controlling herself with difficulty. “Father, nor any of us, did not embrace the Cause of Liberty without due thought. It did seem to us that life was not of worth unless it were accompanied by Freedom. To be free to worship God in our own fashion was the reason that the Great Founder built our city on the Delaware. England would have taken religious freedom from us also had not her oppression with regard to political rights been checked. It was not without the guidance of the inward light that we arrayed ourselves with Liberty, Truelove.”
“Sometimes what one thinks is the leading of the inward light is but the old Adam that is within us tempting to strife,” remarked Truelove provokingly. “I greatly fear ’tis so in thy case, Margaret. ’Tis easily seen that thou art of a froward and perverse nature. Come! sit by me, Margaret, while I read thy duty to thee. Thou art in need of a lesson.”
“Not from thee.” Peggy’s eyes were sparkling now, and she spoke with some heat. “Who art thou that ’tis thy duty to read me a lesson? Thou art a stranger, met but a moment since. I listen to no lesson from thee, Truelove Davis.”
“And there spoke the Owen temper,” came from the other severely.