“One satisfaction I did have,” Miles said more cheerfully. “When Christmas came and my mother sent me a great hamper of good things, I dared the passage to the house of David Thurston’s brother again, and sent by his boy a fine ham and a large, fat goose as an aid to that officer’s holiday dinner. I knew not his name, but I could give the lad directions for finding the place where my friend lodged. And to the goose’s leg I fastened a paper that said, ‘With the compliments of General Washington’s Army.’”
“Do you think that he received it?” asked Clotilde.
“I know he did,” was his answer, “for, two days after, there was put into my hand a packet containing a toy wooden gallows, such as children use for the hanging in a Punch and Judy show. And to it was fastened a paper saying, ‘With the compliments of King George the Third.’”
In her laughter over Miles’ hearty disgust with himself, Clotilde, for a little time after his visit, forgot to grieve over the ruined garden. But when Spring came and there were no bright daffodils nodding by the gate, when the covering snow melted and showed once more the charred wreckage of the burned house, when the hedges displayed only a few green twigs coming up from the roots, and the linden tree, long after the whole green country was in abundant leaf and blossom, still stood a blackened skeleton against the sky, then her grief awoke afresh.
In the kitchen garden, the apple trees and the row of beehives beneath them had by chance been spared. Yet to see the apple trees blooming alone in a black and desert waste, to watch the bees flying about in bewilderment, looking for flowers that had once yielded such generous honey, was worse, almost, than to have had all perish together. Clotilde had need, through these days, of all her courage and of all Stephen’s shrewdly comforting sayings, to keep up even a show of cheerfulness.
Two great events, however, the Spring brought, which were of equal and joyful importance to the people of Hopewell. One was the abrupt departure from Boston of General Howe and all his soldiers, British and German. Early in March they had embarked upon their war vessels, had hoisted sail and cleared the port of Boston with loudly expressed hopes that they would never be so unlucky as to see it again. Many of those wise prophets who are always ready to tell any one who will listen, just what things are going to happen, protested loudly that the war was over and began to criticise General Washington for not sending his soldier boys home. But, strange to say, this eagerly offered advice seemed to fall unheeded upon the Commander’s ears and the Continental forces still remained under arms waiting for the next move.