“Come as soon as thou canst make arrangements, and we will be a reunited family once more, for the winter at least. God alone knows what the spring will bring forth. ’Tis now thought that Sir Henry Clinton intends for the South at that time. ’Twould change the complexion of affairs very materially.”
Here followed some instructions as to financial and other matters. Mrs. Owen called Peggy hastily.
“Oh, mother, mother! isn’t thee glad?” cried the girl dancing about excitedly. “And we will not only be with father, but with the army too. Just think! The very same soldiers that we have been making socks and shirts for so long.”
“The very same, Peggy,” answered her mother, her face reflecting Peggy’s delight. “I am in truth pleased to go. I was much worried as to the outcome of the winter here.”
CHAPTER XIV—THE CAMP AT MIDDLEBROOK
| “We are those whose trained battalions, Trained to bleed, not to fly, Make our agonies a triumph— Conquer, while we die.” —“A Battle Song,” Edwin Arnold. |
“Well, if this be a foot-warmer I wonder what a foot-freezer would be called,” exclaimed Peggy in tones of disgust, slipping from her seat in the coach to feel the covered iron at her mother’s feet. “I don’t believe that the innkeeper at the last tavern where we baited our horses filled it with live coals, as I told him to. He was none too civil.”
“Belike ’twas because we paid our reckoning in Continental money,” remarked Mrs. Owen. “Never mind the iron, Peggy. I shall do very well without it; and if thou art not careful thou wilt drop that box which thee has been so choice of through the journey.”
Peggy laughed as she resumed her seat by her mother’s side.
“Is thee curious anent that box, mother?” she questioned drawing a small oblong box of ebony wood closer to her.