"The Scotch girl cared for your mare and fed her, paying four pence," said the militia-man. "But we were ashamed to take pay."
I examined Kaya. She had been well cared for. Then I lifted her harness from the wooden peg where it hung and saddled her by the lantern light.
And when all was snug I passed the bridle over my arm and led her to the door of the Block House.
Before I entered, I could hear from within the strains of a fiddle; and then opened the door and went in.
The girl, Penelope, sat on a block of wood eating soupaan with a pewter spoon out of a glazed bowl upon her knees.
Ten soldiers stood in a ring around her, every man jack o' them a-courting as hard as he could court and ogle—which all was as plain to me as the nose on your face!—and seemed to me a most silly sight.
For the sergeant, a dapper man smelling rank of pomatum and his queue smartly floured, was a-wooing her with his fiddle and rolling big eyes at her to kill at twenty paces; and a tall, thin corporal was tying a nosegay made of swamp marigolds for her, which, now and again, he pretended to match against her yellow hair and smirked when she lifted her eyes to see what he was about.
Every man jack o' them was up to something, one with a jug o' milk to douse her soupaan withal, another busy with his Barlow carving a basket out of a walnut to please her;—this fellow making pictures on birch-bark; that one scraping her name on his powder-horn and pricking a heart about it.
As for the girl, Penelope, she sat upon her chopping block with downcast eyes and very leisurely eating of her porridge; but I saw her lips traced with that faint smile which I remembered.
What with the noise of the fiddle and the chatter all about her, neither she nor the soldiers heard the door open, nor, indeed, noticed us at all until my militia-men sings out: "Lieutenant Drogue, boys, on duty from Johnstown!"