“But that need really make no difference so far as Eustace’s admiration goes. Besides, there must be others as lovely.”
“Of course; but you are pretty, too, when your face is not long and your eyes red with weeping.”
Betty went home comforted; and that night, when her mother made some sharp remark about the Singleton household, she plucked up courage to say it was scarcely fair to judge the whole family adversely because of the father’s shortcomings. And then, scared at her own temerity, she ran away to her room, and cried out her trouble to that insensate and inanimate confessor of wronged or sorrowing womanhood,—her pillow.
A week later, Joscelyn, coming from the Singletons’, tied a red ribbon on her shutter as a sign that she had news; and Betty, hastening over, soon learned of Clinton’s long and tempestuous voyage from New York to Charleston, whither he went to subdue that city. Eustace had been badly hurt in the storm that wrecked so many of the transports, and had been laid up in the hospital at Tybee Bay for weeks, while Clinton went on to Charleston to begin the siege.
So the British had come again to the south to teach the people of that section their duty to their king, and the quiet that had reigned at Hillsboro’ was broken by the coming and going of recruiting parties, and by the vacillating reports of victory or failure from the beleaguered city.
But it was not until August that the climax came. Then Gates, smarting with the defeat at Camden, halted the remnant of his flying army, scarcely a thousand strong, at the town on the Eno, to rest and sum up the full measure of the disaster that had befallen him. During the short time that he remained, the town was in a ferment. The way to the camp was thronged with sympathizers; kitchen chimneys smoked with the extra cooking, and in every house was a banquet of the best that could be had. Only in the Cheshire house was there no preparation, nor yet upon the door was there the blue and buff cockade that marked the others. There were not lacking those who called official attention to this fact, and so many comments and criticisms crept about among the soldiers that a couple of young officers, bent on a frolic and thinking to teach this wilful Joscelyn a needed lesson, stopped upon her porch and sent word that they would speak with her. And presently she came down to them, dressed fit to dance in a queen’s minuet in silver brocade over a scarlet petticoat, the round whiteness of her neck and arms shining through foamy lace, a red rose in her powdered hair, and a black patch near the corner of her mouth giving a saucy emphasis to her lips. As she stepped out of the door, the young fellows who had been lounging on the porch rail instantly sprang up and uncovered at the sight of so much beauty and dignity. They had thought to find a country maid, mayhap a woman past her youth; and instead, this glowing creature stood before them.
“What is your pleasure, gentlemen?” she asked; but the stiff courtesy of her question was belied by the laugh in her eyes.
They exchanged uneasy glances, and one took a step toward the porch exit; but the other, who was to be spokesman, summing up resolution, stammered and answered:—
“We found no cockade of the nation’s colours on your door, and did but stop to ask the reason.”