"It was all decided last night," said Betty, tucking her little feet
carefully under her gown and clasping her knees with her hands to keep
them warm, as she sat in Moppet's chair, which stood close by the fire,
where a log burned and crackled in the big chimney--a most unusual
luxury for those days, and granted only to Moppet's youth and slight
delicacy of constitution. "Father found the pass from General Washington
among his dispatches brought by the courier; and as it includes Mrs.
Seymour's maid, he arranged with her that I go instead, as Mrs. Seymour
kindly says she can procure another attendant in New York. I can scarce
believe it possible, Sally. Oh, fancy my having to live in a city
occupied by the British!"

"Ah," sighed Miss Moppet, pressing her head against Betty's knee, and a
spark of interest lighting up her doleful little face, "if only some of
them be like my good"--

"Oh, some of the Tories may be passably amusing," said Betty hastily,
giving Moppet a warning glance, as she checked the words on the child's
lips by a soft touch of her hand. "I doubt not that Gulian, my
brother-in-law, has fine qualities, else Clarissa had not been so fond
of him as to leave us all and go so far from us. But I trust that even
Gulian may not see fit to talk loyalist to me; my naughty tongue would
get me into trouble straightway."

"You must learn to control your tongue, Betty," said Moppet primly, with
a roguish twinkle of her eyes upward. "Miss Bidwell says mine is an
unruly member, and told me a most dire tale of a little girl whose
mother for punishment pricked her tongue with a hot bodkin."