After he had left her, Kitty slipped into the house and up to the little chamber that she shared with Sally Rose. She went to the window and stood there, looking at the still town, and the moonlit river, the campfires on Winter Hill, the lights of the warships far down the dim bay.
Less than three months back, it was, that they had all played hide-and-seek in Newburyport, but they would never play hide-and-seek again. Never again would they be that young.
Even she and Sally Rose, Gran had said, would be great-grandmothers some day. How glad she was that Gran had had that last cup of tea.
She turned from the window and began to undress, laughing as she remembered the struggle to get Sally Rose out of the stays. Never again, she thought, would they be as young as that.
She was just climbing into bed when Sally Rose opened the chamber door.
“Kitty,” she said, “there’s going to be handsome men in uniform about for ages. Captain Davenport was just telling me that he expects a long war. He says that since Bunker Hill, the word’s been in everybody’s mouth that we’re going to live free or die—and that will take a long time.”
“Live free or die? What does that mean?” asked Kitty, bewildered.
“Well, I don’t understand it myself,” said Sally Rose, taking the ribbon out of her curls, “but I have an idea of one man who might know. I think you’ll be likely to find out if you go and speak to Tom Trask.”
Kitty lay in the wide bed and watched her cousin slip out of her dainty garments and fling them carelessly across a chair. Yes, she thought, there was, after all, some sort of unconscious wisdom about the pretty featherbrain. Hanging and wiving goes by destiny, Colonel Stark had said, and she had known that Gerry was her destiny, almost from the day she had seen him first from the door of the Bay and Beagle as he marched past with the prisoners’ cart. And she would not have it otherwise, for she loved Gerry. He would be as good an American as most others, some day. He had many virtues, and she would rejoice and be proud of them all her life, most likely. But when it came to a matter of living free, Sally Rose was right. Tom Trask was the man who would know.
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