"Good lack," quoth Kitty. "Where are the men nowadays, grandma? Save for
the redcoats, and I am not so daft over Sir Henry Clinton's gay officers
as some--no doubt't is my Quaker blood--except for the officers, where
are our gallants? Some of mine are up the Hudson beyond the neutral
ground, others with the rebels at Morristown."

"Hush," said grandma, with an uneasy glance toward the door; "do not
talk of rebels in this house; hadn't thee better run up and see
Clarissa?"

"If Miss Kitty pleases," spoke the voice of Pompey at the door, "will
she walk upstairs? Young madam wants to see her."

"Coming," said Kitty, kissing grandma fondly, and then following Pompey
as he marched gravely up to open the door of Mrs. Verplanck's
morning-room. It was a tiny apartment; for when Gulian Verplanck brought
his young bride home he had added a room to the wing below, and as it
greatly enlarged their bedroom, the happy idea had struck him to throw
up a partition, corner-ways, which formed an irregularly shaped room
opening on the passage, and gave Clarissa her own cherished den in that
great house of square rooms and high ceilings. In it she had placed all
her home belongings; her spinnet, which had been her mother's (brought
by sloop to New York from New Haven), found the largest space there, and
her grandmother's small spinning-wheel was in the corner near the
chimney-piece which Gulian had contrived to have put in lest his
delicate wife might suffer with cold.

Near the small log which blazed brightly on the hearth, in a low chair
made somewhat easy with cushions, sat a fair, fragile-looking, girlish