VACUATION DAY, with all its excitement, was soon followed by that day well nigh as eventful, when on the Fourth of December General Washington took final leave of his officers “in the great historic room” at Fraunces Tavern, a leavetaking that proved a very touching and trying ordeal both for him and for them. Starlight and Flutters, who had contrived to be in the forefront of the crowd that looked on, could have told you how plainly strong emotion was betrayed on the brave General’s face, as he passed out from the tavern, and down to the barge that was waiting to convey him to Paulus Hook on his way to Congress.
But after that day, affairs settled down into much quieter channels than they had known for some time—that is, at any rate as far as the people with whom we have most to do are concerned. The Van Vleets had asked Aunt Frances to make her home with them indefinitely, and though still faintly cherishing the hope that she might have her own home back again some day, she had accepted their invitation, and opened a little school among the farmers’ children in the neighborhood. Starlight was one of her most promising pupils, and so his visits to Kings Bridge were of necessity less frequent than they used to be. In that matter, Cousin Harry had a great advantage over him, for having moved to New York in order to be near his office, what more natural, and, as Harry would have said, “what more delightful,” than to spend all his evenings at the Bonifaces? And what a blessing those visits were to them, only they themselves could have told you. As soon as he arrived he would first go upstairs and have a talk with the Captain, ransacking his mind for everything that could by any possibility interest him; then when he had told the little or much that he had to tell, or saw that he was tiring him, down he would go to the sitting-room, have a romp with Bonny Kate, if she had managed to stay up past her bed-time, or possibly a game of some sort with Hazel and Flutters, but it generally happened that after a while there was no one left to talk to save Josephine, and of course you know better than to think that Harry minded that. Josephine had generally some bit of work in hand, and could not afford to simply laugh and chat the evening away, with her pretty hands lying idle in her lap, as perhaps is the case with your older sister, when some friend comes to call. No, indeed! it was necessary in those days for her to stitch, and stitch industriously in every available moment, if the Boniface needs were to be in any wise met; nor did these two young people laugh and chat very much either—the times were rather too serious for that; not that they did not have a happy time of it, and sometimes were actually merry, but, as a rule, they seemed to have something of importance to quietly talk over.
Meantime the winter came and went, and spring began to be felt in the air, and an occasional early bird note, or a bunch of pussy willow by the road-side, bore witness to the fact that it was slowly but surely coming.
It had seemed a long, long winter to Mrs. Boniface. For many weeks she had lived the most retired life possible. Few had come to see her, and there were but one or two friends left whom she cared to go and see. If it had not been for Harry Avery, they would scarce have had any communication with the outside world.
There had been no further threats made against Captain Boniface. Even the most bitter of his enemies would hardly have found it in his heart to persecute a man who was so hopelessly paralyzed as never to be able to walk again; but there was something very significant in the fact that they simply left him alone. None of them in a relenting spirit had called to inquire how he was, and if any of the old friends, who had treated him so cruelly that night at the Assembly, ever felt ashamed of their behavior, they never had the grace to own it. Indeed, it is terrible to think how that great mastering passion, which we proudly call patriotism, sometimes seems to smother every noble and natural impulse.
Soon after the Assembly, in fact that very night, Captain Boniface had told his wife of the murders in South Carolina, and it seemed to her then as though every spark of sympathy with the colonies and colonial interests had that moment died within her. She was by far too noble to let actual hatred take its place; but she longed with all her heart for old England, where she had been born, and to turn her back on this new country which had treated her so harshly. So Mrs. Boniface waited, with no little anxiety, for the arrival of the long-looked-for letter, cherishing the fervent hope that her father would send for them all to come to him, planning thoughtfully all the details of their journey, and yet never once daring to put her hope into words. It might happen that, although willing enough to help them, he would not propose to do it by having her little family sweep down upon him and rob the old rectory of the quiet it had known so long, and which must be very grateful to him in his old age. But at last the letter came, and Mrs. Boniface straightway carried it off to Flutters’s room, and closed the door and locked it. Her hands trembled as she broke the seal. What were they to do? that was the question that had anxiously confronted her for several long, weary months; but always she had simply to postpone any attempt to answer it, waiting for this letter; and now it was in her hand what would it tell her?
It proved to be a long, long letter, and she read it slowly through, word by word; then she buried her face in her hands and cried; but sometimes people cry for joy and not for sorrow.
Late in the afternoon of the same day, Flutters was grooming
Gladys in the barn, accompanying the process with a queer, buzzing noise, such as I believe is quite common to grooming the world over.
“Flutters, where are you?” called Hazel, coming into the barn in search of him.
“Here with Gladys, Miss Hazel.”
“What do you think, Flutters?” and then Hazel climbed up and seated herself on the edge of Gladys’s trough, before adding:
0205
“We are going to England to live with grandpa. Mother says he’s just the dearest old man, and he’s sent for us all to come. He lives in a lovely rectory in Cheshire.”
“You don’t mean it, Miss Hazel!” said Flutters, his breath quite taken away.
“And of course you will go with me, Flutters. Mother says you may.”
“It’s very kind of you to be willing to take me,” Flutters managed to reply, but at the same time realized that he would do almost anything rather than go back to England, and to the very same county, too, from which he had come; and he leaned down, apparently to brush some straw from one of Gladys’s legs, but really to hide the tears of bitter disappointment that had sprung unbidden into his eyes. Fortunately, the ruse succeeded very well, Hazel never dreaming but what he was as delighted with the news as she herself.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to go, Flutters, although mother says we probably never should have gone, if it had not been for father’s illness. Things are getting so much quieter now that she thinks people would have let us alone, and father could, perhaps, have found some way to make a living, because, you see, we haven’t much money left since the war; bu............