“Yes, I'm sure it does, and you will go and take Mrs. Boniface and Miss Josephine; promise me, Captain.”
The Captain did not reply at once, and Harry had time to realize that in his earnestness he was rather overstepping bounds.
“Of course I do not mean to ask you to promise me,” he stammered, coloring up to the roots of his hair, “but you know what I mean. I am so anxious you should meet them half way.”
“And you think we really ought to go? Why, a Dancing Assembly is the last thing in the world we care to have a hand in. But Mrs. Boniface will not stir a step when she hears about this wholesale murder of the Bentons, so that settles it.”
“And you feel that you must tell her?”
“No, of course there is no must about it. I will think it over,” and then the Captain and Harry entered into a thorough discussion of the events that had led up to the sad consummation in South Carolina, and Harry had some facts at his command by which he succeeded in partially convincing the Captain that, in many cases, the Tories had been treated very much as they deserved.
“Well, Harry, you may be right, you may be right,” sighed the Captain, “but that does not make the sacrifice of my old friends any easier to bear.”
“Not a whit, sir, I can understand that,” and then they started toward the house, for they could see that Mrs. Boniface and Frau Van Vleet were taking formal leave of each other.
Twilight was settling down upon the river, and in those days, when it was the custom for fashionable dancing parties to begin at five o'clock, it was surely fitting that the same hour should conclude an unfashionable Dutch tea-party. Indeed, by the time darkness had fairly mastered the twilight, all the Van Vleets were snugly in bed, and only one light could be seen in the whole farm-house; that was in the window of Aunt Frances's gable room. There she sat reading, by the light of a plump little Dutch candle, certain familiar passages from some dearly loved books. She knew most of them by heart, and yet to much pondering of the noble, uplifting thoughts of these comforting little books was due much of that cheerful courage which was such a help to everybody.
Meanwhile the “Grayling” sailed “up river” and “cross river,” and reached her dock. She had one more name on her list of cabin passengers, however, than when she had sailed that morning, for how could Aunt Frances say “No” when Hazel had come to her and begged that she would please be so very good as to let them have Starlight for over Sunday?