I saw Jack flush, and I shook my head at him. I thought what was said foolish and ignorant, but it became not men as young as we to contradict the doctor. It was Rush who, in ‘77, with Adams and others, sustained Gates, and put him in the Board of War, to the bewilderment of affairs. How deep he was in the scheme of that officer and Conway and Lee to displace our chief none know. My aunt insists he had naught to do with it. He was an honourable, honest man, but he was also a good, permanent hater, and sustained his hatreds with a fine escort of rancorous words, where Jack or I would have been profane and brief. The cabal broke up with Lee’s trial, and when Cadwalader shot Conway through the mouth, and, as he said, stopped one d--- lying tongue, it did not change our doctor’s views. When he and Dr. Shippen, who was no Tory like the rest of his family, quarrelled, as all doctors do, Rush preferred charges, and was disgusted because his Excellency approved the acquittal with some not very agreeable comments. I think he never forgave the slight, but yet I liked him, and shall ever revere his memory as that of a man who deserved well of his country, and had the noble courage of his profession, as he showed amply in the great yellow-fever plague of ‘93. He told me of my father as still much the same, and of my Aunt Gainor, and of Darthea, who, he thought, was troubled in mind, although why he knew not. She had long since ceased answering the messages we sent her through my aunt. Mr. Warder, he told me later, had given up his suit to Madam Peniston, and was now an outspoken Whig. The lady was disposed to seek refuge again with her De Lancey cousins in New York, but Darthea was obstinate, and not to be moved. And so we got all the gossip of our old town, and heard of Mrs. Arnold’s having been ordered to leave, and of how the doctor, like our own Wayne, had always distrusted her husband. Indeed, we had asked a thousand questions before we let the doctor get to my bed, and we ourselves, pulling on our sherry-vallies, a kind of overalls, to protect our silk stockings from the mud, were away to the ball. Despite our many cares and former low diet, we danced till late in the night; the good people of Morristown contriving, I know not how, to give us such a supper as we had not had for many a day. I had the pleasure to converse, in their own tongue, with Comte de Rochambeau and the Duc de Lauzun, who made me many compliments on my accent, and brought back to me, in this bright scene, the thought of her to whom I owed this and all else of what is best in me. It was indeed a gay and pleasant evening. Even our general seemed to forget the anxieties of war, and walked a minuet with Lady Stirling, and then with Mrs. Greene. Very quiet and courteous he was, but not greatly interested, or so it seemed to me.