those who go, and those who stay, the ones with the promise that their
wives and children and parents shall be looked after and cared for,
the others with confident talk of victory and speedy reunions.

Squire Edwards tells Elnathan, who with Mrs. Hamlin has come down to
the green, that he needn't fret about the mortgage on his house, and
Deacon Nash tells him that he'll see that his crops are saved, and
George Fennell, who, with his wife and daughter, stands by, is assured
by the Squire, that they shall have what they want from the store.
There is not a plough-boy among the minute men who is not honored
today with a cordial word or two, or at least a smile, from the
magnates who never before have recognized his existence.

And proud in her tears, to-day, is the girl who has a sweetheart among
the soldiers. Shy girls, who for fear of being laughed at, have kept a
secret of their inclinations, now grown suddenly bold, cry, as they
talk with their lovers, and refuse not the parting kiss. Desire
Edwards, the Squire's daughter, as she moves among the groups, and
sees these things, is stirred with envy and thinks she would give
anything if she, too, had a sweetheart to bid good-bye to. But she is
only fifteen, and Squire Edwards' daughter, moreover, to whom no
rustic swain dares pretend. Then she bethinks herself that one has
timidly, enough, so pretended. She knows that Elnathan Hamlin's son,
Perez, is dreadfully in love with her. He is better bred than the
other boys, but after all he is only a farmer's son, and while pleased
with his conquest as a testimony to her immature charms, she has
looked down upon him as quite an inferior order of being to herself.
But just now he appears to her in the desirable light of somebody to
bid good-bye to, to the end that she may be on a par with the other
girls whom she so envies. So she looks about for Perez.