Through the three years of his enlistment Dick faced whatever hardships came to him without a whimper and the sound of his cheerful fife tunes comes down to us through all these years as one of the helps to America’s freedom. He was honorably discharged from the Continental Army when he was a little more than thirteen years old and, with an escort of two soldiers, he walked two hundred miles home.
No one asked him now what he could do for his country. Dick was the hero of the children and everyone else in Hartford. When the Revolution was over and the Stars and Stripes waved over the free Colonies Dick knew that he had helped in winning his country’s independence.
Betsy looked with delight at the dainty white frock spread out on the big four-poster bed in the spare room.
It was early spring in the quaint old Southern town of Salisbury. Through the windows of the big white house of the Brandon plantation which was Betsy’s home came the sweet notes of the first mocking bird, the singing of the farm hands as they ploughed the land for the first planting, and the fresh odor of the pine trees.
A few years before Salisbury had seen the devastating ruin of war in its lovely green borders. Now, in the year of our Lord and of America’s independence, 1791, the South was peacefully planting and harvesting once more. Barns and cellars and the home larders were full to overflowing.
The next day was to bring a great event to Salisbury. The President of the new United States, George Washington, and his cabinet were making a tour of the South. They had driven in lordly, leisurely fashion in their coaches through Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. All Salisbury would see the Greatest American in the morning.
The little town was ready for the President. He was to be met at the village green by an escort of soldiers who would accompany him as he toured the town, and flower girls were to head the procession.
Betsy Brandon was to be one of the flower girls and that was why she had such a pretty new frock. It was made of the sheerest, white dotted swiss with as many ruffles as a white rose has petals. And some of the ruffles were caught up with bunches of tiny pink flowers and green leaves that Betsy’s mother had made with her own clever fingers. A wide pink sash lay on the bed, too, and a white hat with wide pink streamers and a bunch of the same pretty pink flowers in front. Betsy was to wear pink silk stockings and white slippers. Never, in all her life, had she been allowed to wear such lovely things.