A Continental battalion still garrisoned the Point; their officers as I had been forced to notice in the orchard, were received decently by Lady Johnson. And, at that crisis in her career, I think I admired Polly Johnson as entirely as I ever had admired any woman I ever knew. For she was still only a child, and had been petted and spoiled always by flattery and attentions: and she was not very well--her delicate condition having now become touchingly apparent. She was all alone,--save for Claudia,--among the soldiery of a new and hostile nation; she was a fugitive from her own manor; and she must have been constantly a prey to the most poignant anxieties concerning her husband, whom she loved,--whatever were his fishy sentiments regarding her!--and who, she knew, was now somewhere in the Northern and trackless wilderness and fighting nature herself for his very life. Her handsome and beloved brother, also, was roaming the woods, somewhere, with Walter Butler and McDonald and a bloody horde of Iroquois in their paint,--and, worse still, a horde of painted white men, brutes in man's guise and Mohawk war-paint and feathers, who already were known by the terrifying name of Blue-eyed Indians. Yet this young girl, having resolved to face conditions with courage and composure, after her first bitter and natural outburst, never whimpered, never faltered. Enemy officers, if gentlemen, she received with quiet, dignified civility, and no mention of politics or war was suffered to embarrass anybody at her table. All, I noticed, paid her a deference both protective and tender, which, in gentlemen, is instinctive when a woman is in so delicate a condition and in straits so melancholy. Claudia, however, I soon perceived, had been nothing tamed, and even less daunted by the errant arrows of adversity; for her bright eyes were ever on duty, and had plainly made a havoc of the Continental Major's heart, to judge by his sheep's eyes and clumsy assiduities. For when he left the veranda and went away noisily in his big spurs, she whispered me that he had already offered himself thrice, and that she meant to make it a round half-dozen ere he received his final quietus. "A widower," quoth she, "and bald; and with seven hungry children in Boston! Oh, Lord. Am I come to that? Only that it passes time to play with men, I'd not trouble to glance askance at your Yankee gentlemen, Jack Drogue." "Some among them have not yet glanced askance at you," remarked Lady Johnson, placid above her sewing. "Do you mean those suckling babes in the orchard yonder? Oh, la! When the Major leaves, I shall choose the likeliest among 'em to amuse me. Not that I would cross Penelope," she added gaily, "or flout her. No. But these boys perplex her. They are too ardent, and she too kind." "What!" I exclaimed, feeling my face turn hot.