But at the table the talk became very serious, and a cloud settled on Betty’s fair brow as her husband questioned minutely as to the trouble in the city, and when, after supper, they all gathered on the porch to get the cool breezes from the bay, Betty drew very close to William, and, despite the gladness of her home-coming, Lettice felt that she was not beyond an atmosphere of anxious dread, even here in this quiet corner of the world. Rhoda chafed at being obliged to remain in a community of fire-eaters, as she called them, to James’s amusement. The lad loved to tease, and more than once brought tears of rage to Rhoda’s eyes. She liked him, too; perhaps that was the reason he could so easily annoy her. His curly head was wont to appear very often over the railing of the porch at Sylvia’s Ramble, and his greeting was usually, “Howdy, Miss Rhoda, have you heard the news?” “No,” Rhoda invariably returned, looking around sharply. And then James would lean indolently against the porch and gaze up at her with a beguiling expression in his eyes, and would make some such remark as, “They say Massachusetts is getting ready to secede.” Then Rhoda would turn away with a fling and say, “I don’t believe a word of it!” “If she does, you’ll stay down here with us, won’t you, Miss Rhoda?” James would say, giving her one of his fetching glances. Then Rhoda would look confused, and say that she would call her aunt. Once or twice they quarrelled in good earnest, for Rhoda pretended to despise everything which savored of the South, while James never failed to sound Maryland’s praises. “You know,” he said one day, “Maryland is mighty plucky. She stood out against you all in 1778, when the question of setting a limit to Western lands came up. You know she wouldn’t yield an inch, and was the only one of the states that stood up for the public good against all odds. She just wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t join the confederation of states unless they’d come around to her way of thinking.” “Pshaw!” returned Rhoda, but half convinced. “I never heard so much talk about nothing. We never hear that discussed up our way.” “Course not,” James answered. “Good reason why. Massachusetts was one of the states that held Western lands. When did she ever want to give up anything for the public good?” “When did she? You are crazy to talk so! You forget Lexington and Bunker Hill.”