“All very true, Wilhelmina, dearest,” returned the husband, kissing the faithful partner of his bosom with strong affection—­“very true, my dear girl; for girl you are and ever will be in my eyes; but you are one in a million, and I humbly trust there are not ten hundred and one, in every thousand, just like myself.  For my part, I wish dear, saucy, capricious little Maud, no worse luck in a husband, than Luke Herring.”

“She will never be his wife; I know her, and my own sex, too well to think it.  You are wrong, however, Willoughby, in applying such terms to the child.  Maud is not in the least capricious, especially in her affections.  See with what truth and faithfulness of sisterly attachment she clings to Bob.  I do declare I am often ashamed to feel that even his own mother has less solicitude about him than this dear girl.”

“Pooh, Willy; don’t be afflicted with the idea that you don’t make yourself sufficiently miserable about the boy.  Bob will do well enough, and will very likely come out of this affair a lieutenant-colonel.  I may live yet to see him a general officer; certainly, if I live to be as old as my grandfather, Sir Thomas.  As for Maud, she finds Beulah uneasy about Beekman; and having no husband herself, or any over that she cares a straw about, why she just falls upon Bob as a pis aller.  I’ll warrant you she cares no more for him than any of the rest of us—­than myself, for instance; though as an old soldier, I don’t scream every time I fancy a gun fired over yonder at Boston.”

“I wish it were well over.  It is so unnatural for Evert and Robert to be on opposite sides.”

“Yes, it is out of the common way, I admit; and yet ’twill all come round, in the long run.  This Mr. Washington is a clever fellow, and seems to play his cards with spirit and judgment.  He was with us, in that awkward affair of Braddock’s; and between you and me, Wilhelmina, he covered the regulars, or we should all have laid our bones on that accursed field.  I wrote you at the time, what I thought of him, and now you see it is all coming to pass.”

It was one of the captain’s foibles to believe himself a political prophet; and, as he had really both written and spoken highly of Washington, at the time mentioned, it had no small influence on his opinions to find himself acting on the same side with this admired favourite.  Prophecies often produce their own fulfilment, in cases of much greater gravity than this; and it is not surprising that our captain found himself strengthened in his notions by the circumstance.