“I expected it,” laughed Robert Dale. “Let me take Star, Peggy. I will care for her until Tom comes.”
“Oh, but,” began Peggy in expostulation, when Sally interrupted her.
“Let him take her, Peggy. Is he not an aide? ’Tis his duty.”
“Sally, thee is saucy,” laughed Peggy resigning the mare into the lad’s keeping. “Come, girls!” leading the way into the dwelling. “Now tell me everything.”
“First,” began Betty, “thee is to go with us to see a wonderful aloe tree on Fifth Day morn, but more of that anon. Where is thy mother?”
“She is coming in the chaise with Tom, and should be here now. Girls, you should have seen Robert caring for the wagons. He looked like a woodsman. You would have thought that he was about to start for the frontier.”
“She belies me,” said Dale entering at this moment. “I will leave it to Mistress Owen if I looked like one, though I would I had the marksmanship of a backwoodsman. Our companies of sharpshooters are almost the mainstay of the army.”
“The army?” spoke Mrs. Owen catching the last word as she came into the room unperceived. “Is there news, Robert? And what about the chances for peace?”
“The conditions have not changed, Mistress Owen, since last we spoke of them,” returned the lad. “And peace seems as far off as ever. Sir Henry Clinton still holds New York City, while General Washington watches him from the highlands of the Hudson. Along the frontier the savage warfare which began with the massacre at Wyoming continues, and these, aside from skirmishes, constitute all of action there hath been since Monmouth. It seems now to be a question of endurance on the part of the patriots, and of artifice and trickery on the British side.”
“But with the French to help us,” spoke the lady returning the greetings of her daughter’s friends warmly. “The alliance which Dr. Franklin hath at last succeeded in effecting. Surely with such aid the war must soon be brought to a close.”
“The allies have not been as effective so far as ’twas hoped they would prove,” announced he. “Many of the people are seriously disaffected toward the French, declaring that ’tis only a question of English or French supremacy. The soldiers, I grieve to say, incline toward this view, and the loyalists are doing all they can to further such belief.”