A Flock of Girls and Boys Part 18

A rebel relative in Barbadoes was not a matter to trouble oneself about greatly, but a rebel relative on the spot, so to speak,--for young Ephraim was only four miles away at the Cambridge rallying-ground,--was a different thing; and, amiable and easy-going as Mr. Jeffrey Merridew was disposed to be, his nephew's close proximity could not, under the peculiar circ.u.mstances, but be embarra.s.sing and disturbing on occasions; for the young man, besides being his nephew, was Sibyl's brother, and Sibyl, as a member of a royalist's family,--for her father on his departure for Barbadoes had left his motherless girl in her uncle's charge,--could not, of course, be allowed free intercourse with one who had placed himself in an att.i.tude of active hostility to the royal cause.

When Sibyl was apprised of this dictum, she at once made pa.s.sionate protest against it. "What harm do the King's soldiers think poor Eph can do them by now and then paying a visit to his sister?" she asked her uncle scornfully.

"Harm? You are very young, Sibyl, and don't understand these things.

Your brother has chosen very foolishly to join the rebel forces, and so has made himself one of our acknowledged enemies; and I never heard of declared enemies in time of war walking in and out of each other's houses like tame cats," answered Mr. Merridew, sarcastically.

"But Eph, such a boy as Eph, only nineteen, only two years older than I!

What harm could he do now, more than he has ever done, by coming to his uncle's house as a visitor?" still persisted Sibyl, rather foolishly.

"What harm!" exclaimed Mr. Merridew, impatiently. "What a child you are, Sibyl! Why, his coming here would compromise me fatally with the royal government. I should be suspected of disloyalty, and do you think that he, your brother, could be in any such communication with us and fail to see and hear many things that might bring us disaster if reported to his officers?"

"You think Eph would be so mean as to tell tales?" exclaimed Sibyl, in high indignation.

"Tell tales!" repeated Mr. Merridew, flinging back his head with irrepressible laughter at Sibyl's ignorance. Why, my dear, the reporting of important facts, however gained in times of war, is part of war tactics; it is not called 'telling tales.'"

"And would you--would you, if you were in Ephraim's camp as a visitor,--would you--"

"Tell tales?" laughed Mr. Merridew. "Indeed I would, if I heard anything worth telling,--anything that I thought would save the cause I believed to be a righteous cause." Then, more seriously: "Why, Sibyl, it would be my duty to do it."

"Oh! oh!" cried Sibyl, "it is odious, odious, all this war business."

"Yes, I grant you that; but who is to blame for bringing this odious business upon us? Who but these foolish malcontents, these rebels, like--"

"Like my father and my brother," broke in Sibyl, hotly, as Mr. Merridew hesitated.

"Yes, like your father and your brother, I am sorry to say," concluded her uncle, gravely.

"No, no, no!" cried Sibyl, excitedly. "It is not they who are to blame.

They are good and brave and wise. They only want justice and fair play.

It is the King's folk who are to blame,--the King's folk who want to oppress the people with unjust taxes, that they may live in greater grandeur."

Mr. Merridew stared in silent astonishment at this unexpected outburst.

Then, in a severer tone than his niece had ever heard from his lips, he said,--

"So this is the treasonable talk you have heard from your brother; these are the teachings that he has been instilling into you? Ah, it is none too soon that you are cut off from the influence of that headstrong boy."

"But it was my father who instilled these teachings into my brother.

They are his principles, and they are my principles too!"

"Your principles!" and Mr. Merridew, his sense of humor immensely tickled at the sound of this fine word, that rolled off with such an a.s.sumption of dignity from those rosy young lips, burst into a great laugh. Yet then and there he said to himself, "That Jackanapes of a boy, to fill her head with this treasonable stuff! But we'll see, we'll see if we can't crowd all such stuff out with livelier things when we have those fine doings at the Province House Sir William is talking of. Her principles! The little parrot!" and he laughed again.

CHAPTER II.

"And you're to dance the last dance with me, remember, Miss Merridew."

"Indeed, Sir Harry, I will not promise you that."

"You will not promise? But you _have_ promised."

"_Have_ promised? What do you mean, sir? I think you are forgetting yourself!" and Miss Sibyl Merridew lifted up her graceful head with a little air of hauteur that was by no means unbecoming to her piquant beauty.

But young Sir Harry Willing was not to be put down by this pretty little provincial,--not he; and so, lifting up _his_ head with an air of hauteur, he said to Miss Sibyl,--

"I crave Miss Merridew's pardon, but perhaps if she will reflect a moment she will recall what she said to me yester morning when I begged her to give me the pleasure of dancing the last minuet with her to-night."

Waving her great plumy feather fan to and fro, Sibyl looked across it at her companion, and answered in a little sweetly impertinent tone,--

"But I never reflect."

"So I should judge, madam," retorted the youth, wrathfully; "but perhaps," he went on, "if Miss Merridew will deign to bestow a glance upon this"--and the young fellow pulled from his pocket a gold-mounted card and letter case, out of which he took a tablet upon which was written: "Met Miss Sibyl Merridew this morning on the mall. She promised to dance the last minuet with me to-morrow night. Mem. Send roses if they are to be had in the town!"

Sibyl blushed as she read this. Then lifting the flowers--Sir Harry's roses--to her face for a moment, she dropped a demure courtesy and said, with a gleam of fun in her eyes,--

"If Sir Harry finds that it is necessary for _him_ to recall his friends and engagements by memorandum notes, he certainly cannot expect an untutored provincial maid, who carries no such orderly appliance about with her, to charge _her_ mind unaided."

"An untutored provincial maid!" exclaimed Sir Harry, all his wrath extinguished by her pretty recognition of his flowers and his admiration of her ready wit,--"an untutored provincial maid! By my faith, Miss Sibyl, you'd put to shame many a court dame. But, hark, what's that? As I live, the musicians are tuning up for the minuet." And smilingly he held out his hand to her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A very pretty pair]

"A very pretty pair," said more than one of the a.s.sembled company, as the two took their places in the beautifully decorated ball-room; and as the dance progressed, Mr. Jeffrey Merridew, watching his niece from his post of observation, said to himself with, a congratulatory smile,--

"Where now are Miss Sibyl's fine rebel principles? I scarcely think they would stand a test."

Almost at that very moment Sir Harry, boy as he was, spite of his one-and-twenty years, was giving vent to a little boastful talk about "our army" and "those undisciplined rebels who would never stand the test against a full regiment of regulars."

"Why," Sir Harry declared at length, led on by Sibyl's air of great interest, "we have positive information that their troops at Cambridge have neither arms nor ammunition to carry on a defence, and they are in a sorry condition every way; it is impossible for them to resist us successfully. We shall literally sweep them off the face of the earth if they attempt it."

"And you--the King's troops?" inquired Sibyl.

"We--well, we have been a little straitened ourselves for the munitions of war," replied the young aide-de-camp, "but by to-morrow night a vessel will arrive for us that will relieve all such necessities. Ah,"

with a gay smile, "what would not these rebels give to get possession of this information, and put their cruisers on the alert to capture such a prize!"

"But there is no possibility of this?"

"Not the slightest. But you are pale,--don't be alarmed; there is no danger. The rebels have no suspicion of the expected arrival, we are certain."

"But if they had?"

"Well, that might alter the case. Their seamen know their business better than their landsmen."

All this in the pauses of the dance. When they started up again, the music had accelerated its time, and down the great hall they led the way at a fine pace; but in swinging about to return, Sir Harry felt his companion falter.

"What is it?" he asked anxiously.

"My slipper," she replied with a vexed laugh; and, stooping as she spoke, she whisked off a little satin shoe, the high hollow metal heel of which had suddenly given way. Certainly no more dancing that night.