“Oh,” bewailed the girl, “what am I to do? The doctor said she was to have nourishing food; and I have nothing but a little corn meal left. Would you give me one pound for it?”
“I tell ye, I won’t buy it at any price. And I don’t even want it in the shop, so take it away. And if you want to keep out of jail, I would n’t be offering it about; I’ve most a mind to call the watch myself, as ’t is.”
The threat was enough to make Janice catch up the bijou and leave the shop almost at a run; nor did her pace lessen as she hurried homeward, and, safely there, she fast bolted the door. This done, with hands which trembled not a little, she replaced her portrait in the frame, hoping dimly from what the shopkeeper had said, that this would help to prove her ownership. Yet all that day and the succeeding one she stayed within doors, dreading what might come; and any unusual noise outside set her heart beating with fear that it might portend the approach of a danger all the more terrible that it was indefinite. As if her suffering were not great enough, an added horror was the army vans loaded with groaning wounded, which rumbled by her door during the sleepless night she spent.
As time lessened her fright, her necessities grew more pressing, and finally became so desperate, that, braving everything, she went boldly to headquarters, and asked for Lord Cornwallis.
She was referred by the sentry at the stoop to a room on the ground floor, her entrance being accompanied by the man shouting down the hallway: “Here ’s wan more av thim townsfolks, sir.” Entering, Janice discovered two men seated at a table, each with a little pile of money at his elbow, passing the time with cards.
“Well,” growled the one with his back to the door, “I suppose ’t is the usual tale: No bread, no meat, no firewood; sick wife, sick baby, sick mother, sick anything that can be whined about. Body o’ me, must we not merely die by bullets or starvation, but suffer a thousand deaths meantime with endless whimpering!
“Slowly, slowly, Mobray,” advised he who faced Janice. “This is no nasal-voiced and putty-faced cowardly old Quaker. ’T is a damned pretty maid, with eyes and a waist and an ankle fit to be a toast. Ay, and she can mantle divinely, when she’s admired!”
“Ye don’t foist that take-in on me, John André! I score six to my suit, and a quint is twenty-one, and a card played is twenty-two.—Well, graycoat, say your say, and don’t stand behind me as a kill-joy.”
“I wish to see Lord Cornwallis, Sir Frederick,” faltered Janice, nerved only by thought of her mother, and ready to sink through the floor in her mortification.
At the sound of a woman’s voice the officer turned his head sharply, and with the first glance he was on his feet. “Miss Meredith,” he cried, “a thousand pardons! Who ’d have thought to find you here? How can I serve you?”