CHOSEN BY LOT
“Sound to arms! Call in the captains,—
I would speak with them!
Now, Hope! away,—and welcome gallant Death!”
—“Cataline,” Croly.
Enjoy Harriet’s presence Peggy did. Never had the English maiden been more charming. Her vivacity, her endless sallies of wit and humor, and her unfailing store of anecdotes rendered her irresistible. Peggy had always been her mother’s assistant in the household but now, quite to the amazement of both mother and daughter, Harriet insisted upon helping.
“I have been a guest long enough,” she laughingly protested in answer to Mrs. Owen’s remonstrance. “Father declares that you are an excellent housewife, madam my cousin. He would be pleased indeed to have me learn of you. Beside,” she added with a most charming blush, “I dare say that I shall have a house of my own to look after some day; so ’tis quite time that I knew something of housewifery.”
And marveling greatly at this change in the once indolent Harriet, Mrs. Owen took the girl forthwith under her wing, and spent long hours instructing her in the mysteries of housekeeping. But the time was not all devoted to labor. There were lighter hours in which the maidens took daily rides. There was also much dining about among the officers, their families, and the neighboring gentry of the town and neighborhood. As the weather became warmer picnics followed in the near-by woods, so that there was no lack of diversion. In these pastimes Clifford was an almost constant attendant. Mr. and Mrs. Owen had pressed him to become an inmate of their home, which, being on parole, he was at liberty to do, and he had accepted. The young people made a lively household, and it seemed to Peggy that it was the happiest time that she had enjoyed since the long, grim, weary years of fighting had begun. So the days sped pleasantly and May passed, and June with all its riotousness of roses was upon them.
One warm June morning the family gathered in the pleasant, low-ceiled dining-room for breakfast. Harriet, attired in a wash dress well covered by a vast apron, flushed and rosy, stood at the head of the table.
“I have cooked every bit of the breakfast myself,” she declared proudly. “Cousin David, if you and Clifford don’t do justice to it I shall take it as a personal affront.”
“No wonder the breakfast is an hour late,” murmured Clifford to Peggy as they sat down. “I do think she might have invited Major Dale, or that Yankee captain, instead of making us her victims.”