For the next half-year, then, Annette was the centre of interest in her own little world. The judge and Mrs. Bloommaert, Sappha, and Leonard gladly entered into the spirit of this generous service for, and sympathy with, the exultant little bride. And at this period of her life, even her foibles and selfishness were pleasantly excused. It was her last draught of the careless joy of girlhood; no one wished to spill, or spoil, one drop of it. Leonard and Sappha were much of their time at the Bloommaert House in Nassau Street; although Leonard, in the City Commissioner’s office, was making some pretence of mapping out streets and lots of ground in the wilderness round Harlem Flat. But this business hardly interfered with his attentions to Sappha and Annette; nor yet with the military spirit which took him very regularly to the guard-room of some of the volunteer companies. He was also a recognised dependence when the city wished to entertain some hero whom it delighted to honour; for then both his purse and his natural genius for method and arrangement made him an invaluable surety for success. During this half-year there were not many warlike events to influence New York, and her citizens had become quite used to the guns at the different forts signalling “the British fleet off Sandy Hook.” Many false alarms also contributed to this sense of security. They were well aware, too, that the already numerous forts were being steadily increased and strengthened, and in April the Battery parade was fortified. This park was then a strip of greensward about three hundred feet wide, between State Street and the water’s edge. It had no sea wall, only a low wooden fence on the edge of a bluff two or three feet high; then loose sand and pebbles to the water’s edge. There was a dock at the foot of Whitehall Street, and at Marketfield Street the water came nearly to the middle of the block between Washington and Greenwich streets. About the centre of the southeastern part of this park there was a public garden and a charming little hall, where coffee, cakes, ice cream, and other delicacies were served; and on summer evenings some of the military bands made excellent music there for the visitors. Of course, the erection of a breastwork around this water line of the park was an interesting event to all the dwellers on the Bowling Green, and Sappha and Leonard, during the lovely days of April and May, took their walks about the Battery fortifications, and thus thrilled their love through and through with the passion of patriotism and the glow and excitement of its warlike preparations.