Boys and Girls of Colonial Days Part 10

"You are indeed right, Prudence," he said. "My hands need a dose of my mother's good soft soap, but"-the boy's voice dropped to a whisper-"all this morning I have been busy digging holes in the orchard."

"Why?" Prudence's blue eyes were wide with wonder. William got up now and looked all about him to see that no one was listening. Then he whispered in Prudence's ear.

"For burying the silver," he explained. "We packed it all in a strong box; my grandmother's teaspoons, the silver cake basket with the design of strawberries around the edge, and the sugar tongs. We buried them all; oh, very deeply."

"Was it necessary, William?" Prudence's eyes were frightened as she spoke. "I know that my mother, before she had to take to her bed with the ague, planned to hide our silver in the well that is dried out.

Are-are the Red Coats coming through Philadelphia soon?"

"They do say that they are coming. I am very fearful," William answered.

Then, as Prudence's pink cheeks grew a little pale at the thought, the boy pointed to her sewing.

"What are you st.i.tching, Prudence? Surely you are not going to dress yourself in these gaudy colors? It would scarcely be right in these hard times."

Prudence laughed, shaking out the strips of scarlet and white that filled her lap.

"No, indeed, William. Dark colors and plain frocks must be worn by us children of the war. I am making a flag. Our great, beautiful stars and stripes of the Colonies went to our regiment with father and your brother John. But I went down to the flag shop of Mrs. Betty Ross not long ago, and I stood awhile on the threshold, watching how she and her maids cut and sewed their red, white, and blue cloth together. I said to myself, 'why not make your own flag, Prudence Williams? You have ten fingers and a piece bag up in the attic.' And here it is, all done but sewing on the little white stars."

"Oh, Prudence!" William's eyes shone.

"It is wonderful! How did you ever measure and sew it so well? I always did say that you are the most clever girl with your needle of any in town."

"It _is_ carefully made," Prudence a.s.sented, "but that is because I thought of my regiment with every st.i.tch. And I wished that I might march in the regiment beside my father, waving my flag, and shouting for the independence of our dear Colonies at every step. Oh, it is hard, William, to be a girl in this time of the Revolution, with nothing to do but sit at home."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'IT IS HARD, WILLIAM, TO BE A GIRL ... WITH NOTHING TO DO BUT SIT AT HOME'"]

"That it is," William said, "but now let's go in the house and delve in your cooky crock, Prudence. Perhaps your cook has filled it with her good caraway cakes," and the two little neighbors disappeared through the great white door of the old house.

In the days that followed, Prudence quite forgot to dread the coming to Philadelphia of the British soldiers. Rumors came of how the Red Coats had marched through the near-by towns and countryside. They had taken possession of the homesteads, appropriated the supplies that had been left for the women and children, and plundered the treasures of silver that were almost all the wealth of the Colonists. News of this reached the ears of those who remained behind, alone, in Philadelphia. But Prudence paid little heed to the rumors. Her mother was better, but still an invalid and confined to her room. There was only one maid servant to do the work of the large house, and Prudence found herself a real little housekeeper with her hands very full. All day long she tripped up and down the wide oak staircase, with instructions from her dear mother to the maid in the kitchen, and then helped to carry them out. She had finished the flag. It was laid away in a drawer.

"It's hardly safe to fly a flag from your piazza, Prudence," sensible William had warned. So Prudence opened the drawer only when she had a little spare time. Then she would kneel down on the rag carpet in front of the drawer and hold the beloved Stars and Stripes tenderly in her arms.

"I love every star, and every color," she would say to herself. "Oh, may G.o.d win the battle for us and help to give me back my father, and William his brother John!"

The next morning, when Prudence set the tray with her mother's breakfast, she laid it with unusual care. Upon the sun-bleached linen cloth stood the thin china dishes, white with a pattern of raised bunches of grapes in purple and green. The silver spoons and forks were arranged neatly. Prudence's mother, sitting in a big arm chair by the window where the sweet odors of the garden roses were blown up to her, looked lovingly at her small daughter.

"You are a good little housewife, my dear," she said. "I don't know what I should have done without you. Father will find his little girl almost a little woman when he returns." She paused a moment, lifting one of the silver spoons to break the end of her eggsh.e.l.l. "If he ever does return," she sighed. "Oh, I should have hidden the silver weeks ago."

The sound of a m.u.f.fled drum struck her ear. She looked at Prudence in terror. "Pull the curtains close, child, and lock all the doors. The Red Coats are coming."

Like a line of fire taking its winding way in and out between the houses, the regiment of British soldiers streamed through the streets of Philadelphia. Here, it stopped as an officer and his men stripped the fruit from some peaceful orchard or garden. There, at an officer's order, a group of soldiers entered a house, and returned with bits of old family treasure that war gave them the privilege of taking.

Prudence's heart beat fast, but she tried to be brave. She ran from room to room, stowing away the silver candlesticks and tableware, closing blinds, and locking doors. The old maid servant, her ap.r.o.n held over her head, had fled to the cellar in her fright. Her mother, bravely directing Prudence, was still unable to leave her room. Suddenly the front door burst open and in came William.

"I couldn't bear to leave you alone, Prudence," he said. "See, I brought my father's old drum, thinking we could make a little noise on it and scare the Red Coats."

Prudence looked into the brave face of her little neighbor.

"You've given me an idea, William," she exclaimed. She ran over to the chest of drawers, opened one drawer, and pulled out the little homemade flag.

"We'll both scare the Red Coats," she said. "We won't fasten the doors, for it wouldn't be of any use. The soldiers could very easily break the bolts and I can't find any safe place to hide the silver. Come. We'll go right out on the piazza and meet the whole British army if it comes!"

She clutched William's hand, and tugged him toward the door.

"Do we dare?" William's round, merry face was very sober.

"Of course we dare. Come on. You drum and I'll wave the Stars and Stripes," Prudence said.

The Williams' white house, set a little back from the street in the midst of sweet old flower beds and low hedges of box and yew, looked like a prize to the ruthless Red Coats. It was well known in Philadelphia at that time that Prudence's father had used much of his wealth to further the cause of the Colonies. This made the invading enemy hate him. It was a common rumor, too, that although the Williams'

chests of gold were greatly depleted, there was still much treasure of silver left in the home. News of it pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth of the soldiers.

"There's the house. Left flank, wheel, Halt!" shouted the British general in command. He turned in at the Williams' gate and strode up the path. At the steps he looked up and stopped. "Gad!" he said, "the children of these stubborn Colonists would defy us, too," but a smile took away the stern lines from his mouth.

On the top step of the piazza stood Prudence and William, two brave little Colonists. William was beating a loud, _rap tap_, on the cracked head of an old drum. Prudence, her arm held high above her head, waved the little home-made flag that showed the glorious stars and stripes of their regiment.

"You mustn't come a step farther, sir!" she commanded.

"No indeed!" echoed William. "We won't let you come in."

"So you're holding the fort, are you?" the General asked.

"We have to, sir," Prudence explained. "My father is with the army of the Colonies and my mother is ill. This is my neighbor, William Brewster. He came over to help me guard the house." Then she turned pleading eyes toward the great man as she held out her flag.

"It looks to me as if there were a thousand Red Coats, sir, more or less, out there in the road. There are only two of us. Please, sir, for the sake of our flag, march on!"

Was it dust or the mist of tears that made the British general wipe his eyes? He reached out one ungloved hand and grasped Prudence's little one.

"Give my sympathy to your mother, my child," he said kindly, "and tell her that I hope she will soon be better. Little soldiers, remember that never before have I surrendered, but now I do, in the name of the King.

March on!" he ordered to his men. Looking back he saw Prudence and William standing in the gate and waving him good-bye until the trees and the distance shut them from his view.

THE BOY WHO HAD NEVER SEEN AN INDIAN

"I saw Painted Feathers this morning," the boy said as he threw himself down on the rude log settle in front of the fire and stretched out his hands to feel the blaze. "He seemed angry about something," he went on, "but he and the young braves were glad to see me. They like us, mother.

Painted Feathers remembers how you took care of his little daughter, Laughing Eyes, when she strayed away from the camp up in the Blue Ridge, and he still wears the beads you gave him around his neck. Heap big chief, Painted Feathers, but I guess we've made him our friend."

The woman in homespun, who bent over a savory stew brewing in a kettle that hung from the crane, smiled as she looked down at the boy's manly face. He was the counterpart of his father, who had gone over the Blue Ridge hunting, and had never returned-lost in the trackless wilderness of the woods, they feared. He wore the same kind of rough suit of tanned skins, hide boots, and fur cap. His eyes were just as deep and fearless as his father's had been. He was his mother's mainstay now in the little cabin set so far from any other habitation in the depth of the wilderness. There were Indians near, but, so far, they had been friendly to the two settlers.

"I tried to understand what Painted Feathers was angry about," the lad continued.

"What was it, Eli; nothing that we have done, I trust?" the boy's mother asked, her voice trembling a little as she peered out through the window at the gathering dusk and the gloomy forest that surrounded them.

"Oh, no, mother," Eli hastened to a.s.sure her. "As nearly as I could make out, Painted Feathers and the tribe are afraid of losing their land.

They pointed toward the direction the Shenandoah takes, beyond the Blue Ridge as it flows into the Potomac. They say that the land in that valley is being measured off with strange instruments and by white men who are going to bring their own tribes and build their own camps there.

You can't blame Painted Feathers, mother, for his tribe settled here first. I thought as I came home what a pity it would be to take the land away from the Indians; such lofty trees, and the silver river, and the buds of the wild flowers opening everywhere. I never saw the mountains look so blue as they did in the suns.h.i.+ne this morning, and Painted Feathers has lived here for years and years," he said, his clear, boyish voice full of sympathy.

"I know, too, how Painted Feathers feels about this valley," Eli's mother said. "He knows every deer track and every spring and partridge call for miles around. But I think this is all talk about surveyors being near, son. No one has marked out the lands in all this time, and they would scarcely begin now. How much longer the days are!" she added, turning toward the door to open it and let in the earth-soaked wind of the evening. It was early spring and the twilight was long and mellow.