“I must,” spoke Peggy quickly. “There is my cousin dying, friend nurse. I must go on. Does thee fear an invasion of the whole state?”
“It looks as though the invasion were here, Peggy. Of course, it may be but a predatory incursion as others have been before, but I fear, I fear——” ended the good woman shaking her head.
“How much longer will it be before we reach Williamsburg?” inquired the girl.
“We should be there the fourth day from this,” replied Nurse Johnson. “Of course it may be the right thing for you to go on, as you are so near the end of the journey; but I do wish you were safe at home.”
“I shall lose no time in returning after I have done all for my cousin that can be done,” declared Peggy. “I think mother would wish me to go on now, but when all is over——”
“Then you must get back as quickly as possible,” said the nurse.
After all Peggy and old Bishop were right regarding General Washington’s feelings concerning the raid on the plantation.
“It would have been a less painful circumstance to me,” he wrote to his representative when he heard of the matter, “to have heard that, in consequence of your non-compliance with their request, they had burned my house and laid my plantation in ruins.”
So sensitive was this man concerning anything that would seem to touch his honor.