“You are quite right, dadda,” assented the girl, as she stooped and kissed him. “I—I had a reason—which now I will not trouble you with—and selfishly forgot both mommy and our poverty.” Then flinging her arms about his neck, she hid her head against his shoulder and said: “I am promised —you have given Philemon your word, and you’ll not go back on it, will you, dadda?” almost as if she were making a prayer.
“Odds my life! what scatter-brains women are born with!” marvelled Mr. Meredith. “No wonder the adage runs that ‘a woman’s mind and a winter’s wind oft change’! In the name of evil, Jan, what started ye off on that tangent?”
“You will keep faith with him, dadda?” pleaded the daughter.
“Of course I will,” affirmed the squire. “And glad I am, lass, to find that ye’ve come to see that I knew not merely what was best for ye, but what would make ye happiest. If the poor lad is ever exchanged, ’t will be glad news for him.”
The removal to the commissary’s quarters might have been for a time postponed, for barely had the new arrangement been achieved when another manoeuvre wellnigh emptied the city of the British troops. Massing fourteen thousand soldiers, Howe sallied forth to attack the Continental army in its camp at Whitemarsh.
“We have word,” Lord Clowes explained, “that Gates is playing his own game, and, instead of bringing his army to Mr. Washington’s aid, he keeps tight hold of it, and has, after needless delay, sent him but a bare four thousand men. So, in place of waiting for an attack, Sir William intends to drive the rebels back into the hills, that we may obtain fresh provisions and forage as we need them.”
The movement proved but a march up a hill to march down again, and four days later saw the British troops back in Philadelphia with only a little skirmishing and some badly frosted toes and ears to show for the sally, the young officers tingling and raging with shame at not having been allowed to fight the inferior Continental army.
The commissary, however, took it philosophically. “Their position was too strong, and they shoot too straight,” he told his guests. “It will all turn for the best, since no army can keep the field in such weather, and Washington will be forced to go into winter quarters. He must then fall back on Lancaster and Reading, out of striking distance, leaving us free to forage on the country at will.”
Once again his prediction was wrong. “That marplot of a rebel general has schemed a new method of troubling us,” he grumbled angrily a week later. “Instead of wintering his troops in a town, as any other commander would, our spies bring us word that he has marched them to a strong position on Valley Creek, a bare twenty miles from here, and has them all as busy as beavers throwing up earthworks and building huts. If God does n’t kindly freeze the devil’s brood, they’ll tie us into our lines just as they did last winter, and give us an ounce of lead for every pound of forage we seek. No sooner do we beat them, and take possession of a town, than they close in and put us in a state of siege, just as if they were the superior force. Small wonder that Sir William has written the Ministry that America can’t be conquered, and asking his Majesty’s permission to resign. A curse on the man who conceived such a mode of warfare!”