Thankful Blossom | Page 5

and obtrusive. She half released herself
from the captain's arms, thoughtfully and tenderly--but firmly. "Tell me
all about yourself, Allan dear," she said quietly, making room for him
on the wall,--"all, everything."
She turned upon him her beautiful eyes,--eyes habitually earnest and
even grave in expression, yet holding in their brave brown depths a
sweet, childlike reliance and dependency; eyes with a certain tender,
deprecating droop in the brown-fringed lids, and yet eyes that seemed
to say to every man who looked upon them, "I am truthful: be frank
with me." Indeed, I am convinced there is not one of my impressible
sex, who, looking in those pleading eyes, would not have perjured
himself on the spot rather than have disappointed their fair owner.
Capt. Brewster's mouth resumed its old expression of discontent.
"Everything is growing worse, Thankful, and the cause is lost.
Congress does nothing, and Washington is not the man for the crisis.
Instead of marching to Philadelphia, and forcing that wretched rabble
of Hancock and Adams at the point of the bayonet, he writes letters."
"A dignified, formal old fool," interrupted Mistress Thankful
indignantly; "and look at his wife! Didn't Mistress Ford and Mistress
Baily, ay, and the best blood of Morris County, go down to his
Excellency's in their finest bibs and tuckers, and didn't they find my
lady in a pinafore doing chores? Vastly polite treatment, indeed! As if
the whole world didn't know that the general was taken by surprise
when my lady came riding up from Virginia with all those fine
cavaliers, just to see what his Excellency was doing at these assembly
balls. And fine doings, I dare say."
"This is but idle gossip, Thankful," said Capt. Brewster with the
faintest appearance of self-consciousness; "the assembly balls are
conceived by the general to strengthen the confidence of the townsfolk,
and mitigate the rigors of the winter encampment. I go there myself

rarely: I have but little taste for junketing and gavotting, with my
country in such need. No, Thankful! What we want is a leader; and the
men of Connecticut feel it keenly. If I have been spoken of in that
regard," added the captain with a slight inflation of his manly breast, "it
is because they know of my sacrifices,--because as New England
yeomen they know my devotion to the cause. They know of my
suffering--"
The bright face that looked into his was suddenly afire with womanly
sympathy, the pretty brow was knit, the sweet eyes overflowed with
tenderness. "Forgive me, Allan. I forgot-- perhaps, love--perhaps,
dearest, you are hungry now."
"No, not now," replied Captain Brewster, with gloomy stoicism; "yet,"
he added, "it is nearly a week since I have tasted meat."
"I--I--brought a few things with me," continued the girl, with a certain
hesitating timidity. She reached down, and produced a basket from the
shadow of the wall. "These chickens"--she held up a pair of
pullets--"the commander-in-chief himself could not buy: I kept them
for MY commander! And this pot of marmalade, which I know my
Allan loves, is the same I put up last summer. I thought [very tenderly]
you might like a piece of that bacon you liked so once, dear. Ah,
sweetheart, shall we ever sit down to our little board? Shall we ever see
the end of this awful war? Don't you think, dear [very pleadingly], it
would be best to give it up? King George is not such a very bad man, is
he? I've thought, sweetheart [very confidently], that mayhap you and he
might make it all up without the aid of those Washingtons, who do
nothing but starve one to death. And if the king only knew you,
Allan,--should see you as I do, sweetheart,--he'd do just as you say."
During this speech she handed him the several articles alluded to; and
he received them, storing them away in such receptacles of his clothing
as were convenient--with this notable difference, that with HER the act
was graceful and picturesque: with him there was a ludicrousness of
suggestion that his broad shoulders and uniform only heightened.
"I think not of myself, lass," he said, putting the eggs in his pocket, and

buttoning the chickens within his martial breast. "I think not of myself,
and perhaps I often spare that counsel which is but little heeded. But I
have a duty to my men--to Connecticut. [He here tied the marmalade up
in his handkerchief.] I confess I have sometimes thought I might, under
provocation, be driven to extreme measures for the good of the cause. I
make no pretence to leadership, but--"
"With you at the head of the army," broke in Thankful enthusiastically,
"peace would be declared within a fortnight."
There is no flattery, however outrageous, that a man will not accept
from the