“Yes, really, I would,” Hazel reiterated. “If King George's men had beaten you Americans, I suppose you wouldn't have expected to get your home back again; but to think that you have beaten, and yet that Captain Wadsworth says he is going to stay in it, and that a great lawyer, and one of your own officers like Colonel Hamilton, says he has a right to—well, I can't understand it.”
“Neither can I,” said Starlight, indignantly; and both children seriously shook their heads from side to side, as there was no gainsaying that great man. By mutual consent the children had turned their backs on the homestead and their faces in the direction of Hazel's home.
To say that, side by side, they strolled up the Bowery, and that now and then Hazel would pause a moment to pick a plumy spray of asters, growing by the wayside, must sound funny enough in the ears of any one who knows what the Bowery is to-day. Can it be possible that that great busy thoroughfare, with its block after block of cheap shops, crowded tenements, dime museums, and who knows what, less than a hundred years ago was a country lane? and where to-day train after train goes whizzing by on its mid-air track, birds sang in apple-tree boughs and children gathered daisies in spring-time and golden rod in autumn? Yes, my dear, it is possible; for who can measure the great transforming power of even a single century, and Father Time has never wrought vaster or more rapid changes than in the self-same hundred years which lie between the childhood of Starlight and Hazel, in 1783, and yours of to-day.
So, true it was that our little friends strolled up Bowery Lane, for that was the pleasantest way home, and true it was that the lane was skirted with orchards and the gardens of old Dutch homesteads, where almost every variety of autumn flower was blooming, in a blaze of color, in the early September weather.
At the prospect of a visit from Starlight, Hazel had at once abandoned all thought of an immediate call upon Lawyer Hamilton. Even that important matter could be postponed for the delight of companionship with this old friend, a companionship sadly interfered with by all the untoward circumstances of the times in which they lived.
“And Colonel Hamilton says,” Starlight resumed, after five or ten minutes, which had been devoted to a plying of eager questions regarding each others general welfare, “that Captain Wadsworth can stay in our house, does he?”
“I don't know exactly what he says; something like that, I guess; but I am going to find out for myself, and ask him the reasons, too. I was going there this morning if you had not come.”
“You are awfully good, Hazel.”
“I'm glad you think so, Starlight, 'cause I know some people who don't,” and Hazel indulged in a little sigh. “I suppose I shall have a scolding when I get home, this very morning, for I sort of ran away. I saw the Albany coach coming, and I had to hurry so in time to stop it, that I did not think to ask Josephine's leave or anybody's.”
“But Josephine saw you go. That's the way I found you. She saw Joe Ainsworth help you on to the coach, and I thought perhaps you'd gone down to the homestead, for that's where you always used to come on the Albany coach, you know.” It was Starlight's turn for a sigh now, and he drew such a heavy one that it seemed fairly to come from the bottom of his boots.