“Sure’s I know Cato,” said the boy, “and the horse he knew me—be a fool if he didn’t.”
Mrs. Porter immediately summoned the rider to her presence and learned from him that about four miles down the road his pony had given out under haste and heat; that he had met a boy who, pitying its condition, had offered an exchange of animals, provided the courier would promise to leave his pony at the Porter Inn and get a fresh horse there.
“Just like Ethel!” said Polly. “He’ll dally all day now, while that horse gets rested and fed, or else he’ll go on foot. I wonder if I couldn’t catch him!”
“Polly,” said Mrs. Porter, “don’t you leave this house to-day without my permission.”
Poor Mrs. Porter! Truman, her eldest son, had gone. He was sixteen and had been a “trained” soldier for more than six months; that, the mother expected; but Ethel, only fourteen, and full of daring and boyish zeal! Stephen also, the youngest, and the baby, being but ten years old—he had not yet returned from “stirring up the Hotchkisses.” Had he followed Captain Gideon?
“Ethel is too far ahead,” sighed Polly. “I couldn’t catch him now, even if mother would let me; but here comes Uncle Phineas in his regimentals, and Aunt Melicent and Polly and little Melicent, and O! what a crowd! I can’t see for the dust! It’s better than the celebration. It’s so real, so ’strue as you live and breathe and everything.”
Polly ran to the front door. At that day it opened upon a porch that extended across the house front. This porch was supported by a line of white pillars, and a rail along its front had rings inserted in it to which a horseman could, after dismounting beneath its shelter, secure his steed. Long ago, this porch was removed and the house itself was taken from the roadside on 188 the plain below, because of a great freshet, and removed to its present location. The history of that porch, of the men and women who dismounted beneath its shelter, or who, footsore and weary, mounted its steps, would be the history of the country for more than a century, for the men of Waterbury were in every enterprise in which the colonies were engaged; but this is the record of a single day in its eventful life, and we must return to the porch, where Polly is welcoming Mrs. Melicent Porter with the words: “Mother will be so glad you have come, Aunt Melicent, for Ethel has gone off to New Haven and he’s miles ahead of catching, and Stephen hasn’t got back yet from ’rousing the Alarm company. Mother wouldn’t say a word, but she has got her mouth fixed and I know she’s afraid he’s gone, too. I don’t know what father will do when he finds it out.”
“You go, now,” said Mrs. Porter, “and tell your mother that your father staid to go to the mill. He will not be here for some time.”
While Polly went to the kitchen with the message, Mrs. Melicent alighted from her horse and, assisting her little daughter Melicent from the saddle, said: “You are heavier to-day, Milly, than you were when I threw you to the bank from my horse when it was floating down the river. I couldn’t do it now.”