her eagerness her lips almost touched my ear, and her breath warmed my cheek.
"All that I saw and heard," she whispered, "and I know father told Walter Butler, for a scout came yesterday, saying that a scout from the Rangers and the Royal Greens had crossed the hills, and I saw some of Sir John's Scotch loons riding like warlocks on the new road, and that great fool, Francy McCraw, tearing along at their head and crowing like a cock."
"Cousin, cousin," I protested, "all this–all these names–even the causes and the manners of this war, are incomprehensible to me."
"Oh," she said, in surprise, "have you in Florida not heard of our war?"
"Yes, yes–all know that war is with you, but that is all. I know that these Boston men are fighting our King; but why do the Indians take part?"
She looked at me blankly, and made a little gesture of dismay.
"I see I must teach you history, cousin," she said. "Father tells us that history is being made all about us in these days–and, would you believe it? Benny took it that books were being made in the woods all around the house, and stole out to see, spite of the law that father made–"
"Who thaw me?" shouted Benny.
"Hush! Be quiet!" said Dorothy.
Benny lay back in his chair and beat upon the table, howling defiance at his sister through Harry's shouts of laughter.
"Silence!" cried Dorothy, rising, flushed and furious. "Is this a corn-feast, that you all sit yelping in a circle? Ruyven, hold that door, and see that no one follows us–"
"What for?" demanded Ruyven, rising. "If you mean to keep our cousin Ormond to yourself–"
"I wish to discuss secrets with my cousin Ormond," said Dorothy, loftily, and stepped from her chair, nose in the air, and that heavy-lidded, insolent glance which once before had withered Ruyven, and now withered him again.
"We will go to the play-room," she whispered, passing me; "that room has a bolt; they'll all be kicking at the door presently. Follow me."
Ere we had reached the head of the stairs we heard a yell, a rush of feet, and she laughed, crying: "Did I not say so? They are after us now full bark! Come!"
She caught my hand in hers and sped up the few remaining steps, then through the upper hallway, guiding me the while her light feet flew; and I, embarrassed, bewildered, half laughing, half shamed to go a-racing through a strange house in such absurd a fashion.
"Here!" she panted, dragging me into a great, bare chamber and bolting the door, then leaned breathless against the wall to listen as the chase galloped up, clamoring, kicking and beating on panel and wall, baffled.
"They're raging to lose their new cousin," she breathed, smiling across at me with a glint of pride in her eyes. "They all think mightily of you, and now they'll be mad to follow you like hound-pups the whip, all day long." She tossed her head. "They're good lads, and Cecile is a sweet child, too, but they must be made to understand that there are moments when you and I desire to be alone together."
"Of course," I said, gravely.
"You and I have much to consider, much to discuss in these uncertain days," she said, confidently. "And we cannot babble matters of import to these children–"
"I'm seventeen!" howled Ruyven, through the key-hole. "Dorothy's not eighteen till next month, the little fool–"
"Don't mind him," said Dorothy, raising her voice for Ruyven's benefit. "A lad who listens to his elders through a key-hole is not fit for serious–"
A heavy assault on the door drowned Dorothy's voice. She waited calmly until the uproar had subsided.
"Let us sit by the window," she said, "and I will tell you how we Varicks stand betwixt the deep sea and the devil."
"I wish to come in!" shouted Ruyven, in a threatening voice. Dorothy laughed, and pointed to a great arm-chair of leather and oak. "I will sit there; place it by the window, cousin."
I placed the chair for her; she seated herself with unconscious grace, and motioned me to bring another chair for myself.
"Are you going to let me in?" cried Ruyven.
"Oh, go to the–" began Dorothy, then flushed and glanced at me, asking pardon in a low voice.
A nice parent, Sir Lupus, with every child in his family ready to swear like Flanders troopers at the first breath!
Half reclining in her chair, limbs comfortably extended, Dorothy crossed her ankles and clasped her hands behind her head, a picture of indolence in every line and curve, from satin shoon to the dull gold of her hair, which, as I have said, the powder scarcely frosted.
"To comprehend properly this war," she mused, more to herself than to me, "I suppose it is necessary to understand matters which I do not understand; how it chanced that our King lost his city of Boston, and why he has not long since sent his soldiers here into our county of Tryon."
"Too many rebels, cousin," I suggested, flippantly. She disregarded me, continuing quietly;
"But this much, however, I do understand, that our province of New York is the centre of all this trouble; that the men of Tryon hold the last pennyweight, and that the balanced scales will tip only when we patroons cast in our fortunes, … either with our King or with the rebel Congress which defies him. I think our hearts, not our interests, must guide us in this affair, which touches our honor."
Such pretty eloquence, thoughtful withal, was not what I had looked for in this new cousin of mine–this free-tongued maid, who, like a painted peach-fruit all unripe, wears the gay livery of maturity, tricking the eye with a false ripeness.
"I have thought," she said, "that if the issues of this war depend on us, we patroons should not draw sword too hastily–yet not to sit like house-cats blinking at this world-wide blaze, but, in the full flood of the crisis, draw!–knowing of our own minds on which side lies the right."
"Who taught you this?" I asked, surprised to over-bluntness.
"Who taught me? What? To think?" She laughed. "Solitude is a rare spur to thought. I listen to the gentlemen who talk with father; and I would gladly join and have my say, too, but that they treat me like a fool, and I have my questions for my pains. Yet I swear I am dowered with more sense than Sir John Johnson, with his pale eyes and thick, white flesh, and his tarnished honor to dog him like the shadow of a damned man sold to Satan–"
"Is he dishonored?"
"Is a parole broken a dishonor? The Boston people took him and placed him on his honor to live at Johnson Hall and do no meddling. And now he's fled to Fort Niagara to raise the Mohawks. Is that honorable?"
After a moment I said: "But a moment since you told me that Sir John comes here."
She nodded. "He comes and gees in secret with young Walter Butler–one of your Ormond-Butlers, cousin–and old John Butler, his father, Colonel of the Rangers, who boast they mean to scalp the whole of Tryon County ere this blood-feud is ended. Oh, I have heard them talk and talk, drinking o' nights in the gun-room, and the escort's horses stamping at the porch with a man to each horse, to hold the poor brutes' noses lest they should neigh and wake the woods. Councils of war, they call them, these revels; but they end ever the same, with Sir John borne off to bed too drunk to curse the slaves
