“I wish to see Lord Cornwallis,” repeated Janice.
“’T is evident you pay little heed to what has been occurring,” replied Mobray, as he placed a chair for her. “We thought we had all the spirit beat out of Mr. Washington’s pack o’ ragamuffins; but, egad, day before yesterday, quite contrary to all the rules of polite warfare, and in a most un-gentlemanly manner, they set upon us as we lay encamped at Germantown, and wellnigh gave us a drubbing. Lord Cornwallis went to Sir William’s assistance, running his grenadiers at double quick the whole distance, and he has not yet returned.”
“We deemed rebellion well under our heel when we gained possession of its capital,” chimed in Captain André; “but Mr. Washington seems in truth to make a fourth with ‘a dog, a woman, and a chestnut-tree, the more they are beat the better they be.’ Our very successes are teaching his army how to fight, and I fear me the day will come when we shall have thrashed them into a victory.”
“But all this is not helping Miss Meredith,” spoke up Mobray. “Lord Cornwallis being beyond reach, can I not be of aid?”
In a few words the girl poured out the tale of her mother’s sickness, and then with less glibness, and with reddened cheeks, of her moneyless and foodless condition.
Before she had well finished, the baronet swept up his pile of money on the table and held out the handful of coins to the girl.
“Oh, no,” cried Janice, shrinking back. “I— Oh, I thank you, but I can’t take your—”
“Ah, Miss Meredith,” pleaded Sir Frederick, “I was less proud last winter when we were half starving in scurvy-plagued and fever-stricken Brunswick.”
“But food was nothing,” exclaimed Janice, “and that is all I want; just enough for my mother. I thought Lord Cornwallis might—”
“In truth, Miss Meredith, you ask for what is far scarcer than guineas in these days,” said André. “The rebels hold the forts in the lower Delaware so tenaciously that our supply ships have not yet been able to get up to us, and as Washington’s army is between us and the back country, we are as near in a state of siege as nineteen thousand men were ever put by an inferior force.”