“To the girl of my heart say this, that I forget not I am fighting for her, and that I look upon every Redcoat my gun can bring down as one more obstacle removed from betwixt us. I think of her always.”
She paused and puckered her brow in a perplexed frown. “Now who, I pray you, is the girl of his heart? Cannot some of you help me to guess?”
“Methinks ’twould be an easy task for you,” laughed Mistress Strudwick.
“Me?” repeated Joscelyn, still with that air of perplexed innocence. “Nay, he was ever so full of jokes and quarrels that it never came to me he had a heart.”
“Mayhap it is Dorothy Graham he means,” said a voice in the crowd.
“More like ’tis Patience Ruffin.”
“Or little Janet Cameron—he set much store by her.”
“Nay,” said a teasing voice, “Janet is going to be a nun; such messages to her would not be proper.” Whereat there was a general laugh.
“Whoever she is, ’tis a pity she should miss her love message through her lover’s obscurity and our ignorance,” said Joscelyn. “What think you, Mistress Strudwick, were it not a good plan to post this page upon the banister here that all who pass may read? In this wise we may find the maid.”