“What ’s that?”
“I’m writing to Phil Hennion, begging him to intercede with his father and get me permission to bury my wife at Greenwood.”
“You would n’t need to do no asking if you ’d only let me get the property back.”
“You ’re right, man, and if it does nothing more, we’ll perhaps frighten him into yielding us that much.”
“’T will take time, you understand, squire, and it can’t be done if you go to York or out of the country.”
“We’ll stay here as long as there ’s nothing better to do.”
“That’s the talk. And don’t you wherrit about your lodgings, if you ’re short of cash. I’ll fix it with Si, and chance my getting paid somehow. I’ll see him right off, and fix it so you and Miss Janice has the best there is.” He started to go; then asked, “I hope—there is n’t any danger—I suppose—she’ll keep, eh, squire?”
The husband winced. “Yes,” he replied huskily. “The Marquis de Lafayette, quite unasked, ordered the commissaries to give us all we needed of a pipe of rum.”
“That was mighty generous,” said Bagby, “for I suppose he had to pay for it. Even a major-general, I take it, can’t draw no such a quantity gratis.”
“I writ him, asking that I might know the cost, but he answered that ’t was nothing. ’T is impossible to say what we owe to him. ’T was he, so Doctor Craik told me, who asked him to bring Mrs. Meredith off the pest-ship, and ’t was he who furnished us with the army-van in which we’ve journeyed from Virginia. Had we been kinsmen, he could not have been kinder.”