"But I do, Peggy," he answered passionately. "The fluctuations from hope to despair, and from despondency to hope again are far more trying than a certain knowledge of death would be. It keeps me on tenter-hooks. So long as the thing is inevitable, I wish it would come." Peggy looked at him anxiously. His face was pale, and there were deep circles under his eyes that spoke of wakeful nights. His experience with his sister had been far more distressing than she had realized. It came to the girl with a shock just how care-worn he was. "Would that father were here that he might comfort thee," she cried tearfully. "Thee needs him, my cousin." "An he were, he would say--'My lad, thy promise was that Peggy should not be saddened by talk of thy woes; yet here thee is dwelling upon thy sorrow both to thy detriment and hers.'" The transition to David Owen's manner was so abrupt that Peggy smiled through her tears. "I did not know that thee was possessed of the art of mimicry, my cousin," she remarked. "Harriet hath it to perfection, but thee has never shown sign of it before." "'Tis only one whom I know well that I can mimic," he told her. "Sometimes, I believe that I know Cousin David better than father." "And thou shouldst have been my father's son," she cried. "Why, thee looks enough like him to be his son. Then thee would have been my brother, as thou shouldst have been." Clifford smiled at her warmth. "In that case," he said quizzically, "I should have been an American. I wonder if I should have been a Quaker, and a rebel with the rest of you? Or should I have been a Tory?" "Oh, a rebel! A rebel!" she replied promptly, pleased that his melancholy was vanishing. "I doubt it. I cannot imagine myself as other than loyal to my king any more than I can think of myself as a Quaker." "Neither can I think of thee as a Quaker," she said. "Some way thee doesn't fit in with the Society." At this Clifford laughed outright. "That is because you know me as I am," he observed. "Now I cannot think of you as being anything but a little Quakeress. You see, we get our ideas of persons when we first know them, and then we cannot change." "'And cannot change,'" she repeated with some amusement. "Clifford Owen, thee didn't like me at all at first." "No, I did not," he responded, and laughed again. "'Twas because I did not know you aright. Peggy, see how light-hearted you have made me. Our merriment hath caused Colonel Dayton to give us unusual attention." Peggy glanced at the officer. He had been watching the drill, but several times had turned to look at them. As the drill ended he came slowly toward them. "You seem quite happy this morning," he observed. Something in his manner struck the girl with foreboding. "Yes, colonel," answered Clifford. "I had an attack of the blues, but my cousin hath charmed them away. We were trying to imagine me an American."