Kitty felt a little shaken. So Dick had gone off to fight the British. Dick, that she’d played with when they were toddlers and he lived in an adjoining house on High Street. How excited they had been, that day when they first found out they were big enough to scramble back and forth over the low fence. And now he had taken his old tomahawk and marched away, a man with other men! And she was left here to do Gran’s bidding, just as if she were still a little girl. But she did not feel like a little girl. She felt sad and tremulous and excited, as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and still, a little happy in spite of it all. Maybe this was the feel of growing up. Maybe last night when they played hide-and-seek had really been their last night to be young, though they hadn’t known it then. Mostly, she thought, we never know when we do anything the last time.
She suddenly realized that a soft rain had begun to fall, cooling her checks and gathering mistily in her hair.
“Eb—en!” shouted a buxom woman from the back steps of the boardinghouse. “Take in my washing off the line! Step lively there!”
Eben muttered, and his face burned crimson as he walked away.
Kitty looked after him for a moment, and her heart stirred with quick sympathy. It must be hard for Eben to be left behind to do such humble chores while his friend had gone off to war and been accepted as a man. The soft drizzle turned into a downpour. She thought, belatedly and with some alarm, of the roses on her hat. She turned and hurried back to Market Square and up the hill, walking with her head bent because of the rain, trying to shield her finery with one lifted hand. So it was that she did not see him until they almost collided under the tavern sign that hung on a long pole high over the sloping street. Then she caught her breath and stepped back, and looked up into the eyes of Tom Trask, the logger from Derryfield.
He stood there, bareheaded in the rain, and he wore the same hunting shirt and moosehide breeches, but he was not smiling now, though his gray eyes lighted with recognition.
“Playing games on the dock tonight, Miss Kitty?” he asked her, and in spite of his sober face, his voice had a teasing note in it.
She smiled and shook the rain from her lashes. “How did you know my name was Kitty?” she asked him.
“Heard ’em call you that times enough—last night, I mean, whilst I was looking on.” His eyes smiled now, but his mouth remained a thin line. He seemed to be waiting for her answer.
“No,” she said. “We’re not often so silly, and besides, I doubt if the rain will stop. And even if it did—there are hardly enough of us left to play.”