“It is too amusing,” she said one day after one of these chance meetings. “You were such friends at Middlebrook, Peggy, and now you will not speak to him. All because he hath come to the conclusion that the king hath the right of it.”
“I have already told him how I feel anent the matter,” answered Peggy with a sigh. “There is no more to be said.”
“Would I had been a mouse to have heard it,” laughed Harriet. “Clifford hath not even yet learned to trust him, though father chides him for his feeling, and is disposed to make much of the captain. I think my brother hath never got over the fear that he may have been in favor with me. ’Tis all vastly entertaining.”
“Treachery never seems amusing to me,” remarked Peggy quietly.
“I don’t think I should term taking sides with the king treachery,” retorted her cousin. “It seems to me that ’tis the other way. You, and others with Whiggish notions, are the traitors. ’Tis an unnatural rebellion.”
“’Tis idle to speak so, Harriet, and useless to discuss it. We shall never agree on the subject, and therefore what purpose is served by talking of it?”
“Only this,” rejoined Harriet mischievously, turning to note the effect of her words upon her cousin: “we were speaking of Captain Drayton, were we not? Well, Peggy, you will have to get over your feeling toward him, for father hath invited him to dine with us to-morrow.”
“Oh, Harriet!” gasped Peggy. “Why did he?”
“Because he thinks both you and Clifford need a lesson in politeness. Clifford, because of his suspicions, and you because you do not speak to him.”
“Oh!” said Peggy in pained tones. “Would that he had not asked him. ’Twas thoughtless in Cousin William.”