A small sloop, painted a dull gray, was passing up the river, the fresh breeze swelling her brown sails and carrying her fast through the bright water.
“That’s Captain Ross’s vessel,” said Colonel Tremaine. “He has evidently run the blockade and has probably brought a valuable cargo with him.”
“Wouldn’t it be well, my dear,” asked Mrs. Tremaine, pouring out the colonel’s second cup of potato coffee, “if I should order the carriage this morning and go to Captain Ross’s house? We’re running short of supplies of many things.”
“It would be most judicious, my dearest Sophie,” answered the colonel, his white teeth showing in a smile, “if Captain Ross were a patriotic person, but unluckily he declines to receive either the State money of Virginia or Confederate money, and we have no other sort.”
Mrs. Tremaine sighed and answered after a moment: “I’m not surprised at Captain Ross. I always thought him a very ordinary person, and he proves himself to be entirely without patriotism.”
Mrs. Tremaine, ever willing to give all she had to the Confederacy, thought it strange that Captain Ross should not undertake the risks and dangers of blockade-running and then sell his goods for a promise to pay.
“It isn’t that I mind our privations,” Mrs. Tremaine continued. “And I’m sure you, my dear, wouldn’t hesitate at any sacrifice for our country, but it distresses me to think that our guests shouldn’t have their accustomed comforts.”
It distressed Colonel Tremaine very much that with two wardrobes full of clothes, he was compelled to wear homespun, but it distressed him far more to think that the guests under his roof should want for anything, and so he expressed himself.
“I really relish the substitute for coffee which your ingenuity, my dearest Sophie, has supplied, but I’m afraid that Madame Isabey wouldn’t care for it.”
“Naw, suh,” said Hector, hurling himself into the conversation. “Me an’ de ole lady had a collusion ’bout dat coffee. I teck some ob your ’tato coffee up to dat ole lady——”