While, throughout that sad summer, my Jack was slowly coming back to health, even the vast events of the war now under way moved me but little. My Aunt Gainor would think of no one but her young Quaker. Her house was no longer gay, nor would she go to the country, until Mr. Warder agreed that she should take Jack with us to the Hill Farmhouse, where, in the warm months, she moved among her cattle, and fed the hens, and helped and bullied every poor housewife far and near. In a bright-tinted hammock I fetched from Madeira, Jack used to lie under the apple-trees that June and July, with my aunt for company; better could hardly have been. When I came from town in June, with news of what the farmers and their long rifles had done at Bunker Hill, it was a little too much for Jack’s strength, and he burst into tears. But Dr. Rush declared that self-control was an affair of physical health, and that he who had too little blood--and Jack was lily-white--could be neither courageous, nor able to contain his emotions. I suppose it may be true. I went in and out of town daily, my father being unwilling to go to Merion. At times I met James Wilson, who was steadily urging me to enter the army. Wetherill had scarce any other words for me. But my father, Jack’s condition, and my aunt’s depending on me, all stood in my way, and I did but content myself with an hour’s daily drill in town with others, who were thus preparing themselves for active service. We were taught, and well too, by an Irish sergeant--I fear a deserter from one of his Majesty’s regiments. As Jack got better, he was eager to have me put him through his facings, but before he was fit the summer was nigh over. It had been a time of great anxiety to all men. The Virginia colonel was commander-in-chief; a motley army held Sir William Howe penned up in Boston, and why he so quietly accepted this sheep-like fate no man of us could comprehend. My aunt, a great letter-writer, had many correspondents, and one or two in the camp at Cambridge. “My Virginia fox-hunter,” said my aunt, “is having evil days with the New England farmers. He is disposed to be despotic, says--well, no matter who. He likes the whipping-post too well, and thinks all should, like himself, serve without pay. A slow man it is, but intelligent,” says my Aunt Gainor; “sure to get himself right, and patient too. You will see, Hugh; he will come slowly to understand these people.” I smiled at the good lady’s confidence, and yet she was right. They took him ill at first in that undisciplined camp, and queer things were said of him. Like the rest, he was learning the business of war, and was to commit many blunders and get sharp lessons in this school of the soldier.