I thanked him as well as I knew how. He had indeed consoled me.
When I came in my father had gone to bed, but my mother was waiting to see me. She caught me in her arms, and, weeping like a child, cried, “Oh, I have heard! He did not tell me beforehand, or I should have forbade it. Thou shouldst never have gone! never! It was cruel! Mon Dieu! how could they do it!”
It was I who now had to comfort, and this helped me amazingly, and yet added to my just anger; for why must she, who was innocent, be thus made to suffer? My father, when he came in, had asked for me. He had met my cousin, who had seen me going down Front street, and had hinted that I meant to find comfort at the coffee-house among the officers. She knew better, and had said her mind of this kinsman and his ways; upon which my father had gone angry to his bed. I was beginning to have an increasing distrust and dislike of Arthur, and the present news did not lessen either feeling. So at last here was an end of the consequences of my sad night at the coffee-house.
XI
The next day we went to our farm in Merion. My father said no word of the Meeting, nor did I. The summer of ‘73 went on. I rode in to my work daily, sometimes with my father, who talked almost altogether of his cattle or of his ventures, never of the lowering political horizon. He had excused himself from being a consignee of the tea, on the score of his voyage, which was now intended for September.
My aunt lived in summer on the farther slope of Chestnut Hill, where, when the road was in order, came her friends for a night, and the usual card-play. When of a Saturday I was set free, I delighted to ride over and spend Sunday with her, my way being across country to one of the fords on the Schuylkill, or out from town by the Ridge or the Germantown highroad. The ride was long, but, with my saddle-bags and Lucy, a new mare my aunt had raised and given me, and clad in overalls, which we called tongs, I cared little for the mud, and often enough stopped to assist a chaise out of the deep holes, which made the roads dangerous for vehicles.
Late one day in August, I set out with my friend Jack to spend a Sunday with my Aunt Gainor. Jack Warder was no w a prime favourite, and highly approved. We rode up Front street, and crossed the bridge where Mulberry street passed under it, and is therefore to this day called Arch street, although few know why. The gay coats of officers were plentiful, farmers in their smocks were driving in with their vegetables, and to the right was the river, with here and there a ship, and, beyond, the windmill on the island. We talked of the times, of books, of my father’s voyage, and of my future stay with my aunt.
Although Jack’s father was a Quaker, he was too discreet a business man not to approve of Jack’s visits to my aunt, and too worldly not to wish for his son a society to which he was not born; so Mrs. Ferguson and Mrs. Galloway made much of Jack, and he was welcome, like myself, at Cliveden, where the Chews had their summer home.