It was nearly noon-day then, and the Fourth of July too, but neither Valentine nor Anna thought of the day of the month. Why should they? The Nation wasn’t born yet whose hundredth birthday we keep this year.
The solemn assembly of earnest men—debating the to be or not to be of the United States—was over there at work in Congress Hall in the old State House. They were heated with sun and brick and argument; a hundred and ten British ships of war were anchoring and at anchor over on the ocean side of Staten Island. Up the bay, seven or eight thousand troops in “ragged regimentals” were working to make ready for battle; 141 but not one of them all suffered more from sun and toil and anxiety and greed of blood than did the lad and the lass in the marsh.
They fought it out, with many a sting and smart, another hour, and then declaring that “cow or no cow they couldn’t stay another minute,” they strove to work their way out of the beautiful green of the sedge.
On the meadow-land stood their mother. She had brought dinner for her hungry children,—moreover, she had brought news.
The Yankee troops—the Jersey militia—had gone, but the British soldiers had arrived and demanded beef—beef raw, beef roasted, beef in any form.
The tears that the fiercest mosquito had failed to extort from Anna came now. “I wish I’d let her go,” she cried, fondly stroking Sleet. “At least she wouldn’t have been killed, and we’d had her again sometime, maybe; but now—I say, Valentine, are you going to give up Snow?”
“No, I ain’t,” stoutly persisted the lad, slapping with his broad palm the panting side of the calf, where mosquitoes still clung.
“But, my poor children,” said Mother Kull, “you will have to. It can’t be helped. If we refuse them, don’t you know, they will burn our house down.”
“If they do, I’ll kill them!” The words shot out from the gunpowdery temper of Anna Kull. Poor innocent girl of thirteen! She never in her 142 life had seen an act of cruelty greater than the taking of a fish or the death of a chicken; but the impotent impulse of revenge arose within her at the bare idea of having her pet, her pretty Sleet, taken from her and eaten by soldiers.
“You’d better keep still, Anna Kull,” said Valentine. “Mother, don’t you think we might hide the animals somewhere?”