Everything seemed to be set up in terms of this “fuss,” nowadays. For instance, she and Gran and Sally Rose living here in Charlestown and running the Bay and Beagle, while Uncle Job was away with the Massachusetts troops somewhere. Not knowing they were here, thinking Sally Rose was safe in Newburyport, he hadn’t come home. Then when Gran came to join them, hopping mad at the trick Sally Rose had played, she brought Dick Moody and Timothy along to do the men’s work about the place. They hadn’t stayed in camp long, for Dick was young and couldn’t shoot well enough, and Timothy was old, and his bones creaked. But all they wanted to talk about was the camp and the goings-on there. But they didn’t call it a “fuss” like Gran did. They called it a war. And that had a much more important and terrible sound. War was terrible, Kitty knew, so terrible that it couldn’t be going to happen right here in front of her eyes, to people she knew, maybe to herself--not really. Dick came in from the backyard with an armful of wood and stacked it carefully beside the hearth. Then he stood silent and respectful, looking at Granny. Dick had grown taller, Kitty thought, and next time he went to camp, as he threatened to do every day or so, it wasn’t likely they’d send him home for being too young. Sometimes he and Timothy went to the cow pasture at the foot of Bunker Hill and practiced a little with Timothy’s gun--not much, though, because they didn’t want to waste powder and ball. Suddenly she realized Dick was speaking. He looked at her, but he addressed himself to Granny. “I thank you for bringing me down here, near where I wanted to be. But I’m quitting your service now, Ma’am Greenleaf.” “Oh, go get yourself a slice of bread and molasses, and you’ll think better of it,” said Granny. “You can put maple sugar on it, too,” she added. Dick’s face grew red, and his young voice had an unfamiliar harshness in it. “You’ve fed me well enough, Ma’am. It’s not on account of the food and wages I’m leaving.” “What is it then, and what do you think to do?” asked Gran, with an air of rapidly exhausting patience. “Up the Mystic a ways--in one o’ the swamps there--some men from Gloucester are building fire boats. I been in the ship-building trade. They said I could help them.” “Fire boats!” Granny tried to laugh, but there was no merriment in the noise she made. It sounded like a cackle. “And what do you think to do with fire boats, pray?” “Why, what do most folk do with fire? Burn something. Maybe one o’ the British schooners, or men-o’-war, even. Maybe burn Boston, for all I know. Whatever our orders say.”