Out on Bowery Lane and away up in Harlem, over King’s Bridge, with measured step and triumphant hearts the Continentals were entering the city.  What a procession was that, with General Washington and Governor Clinton at its head, and how all loyal New York spread its banners to the wind and shouted loud and long to welcome it!  There were the picked men of the army, the heroes of an hundred fights, the men of Massachusetts who had been at Lexington and Bunker Hill; General Knox in command, and General Wolcott with his Connecticut Rangers, while Oliver rode proudly at the head of his company.  It was a slow march, down the Bowery and through Chatham and Queen streets to Wall, thence up to Broadway, where the column halted.

It would be vain to describe Betty’s emotion as from the windows of the Verplanck mansion she watched the troops and the civil concourse, and realized that at last, after long years of heroic endurance, of gallant fighting, of many privations, the freedom of the Colonies was an accomplished fact.  Miss Moppet and Peter flew from one window to another and cheered and shouted to their hearts’ content.  Even Grandma Effingham and Clarissa waved their handkerchiefs, while Gulian, on the doorstep, raised his cocked hat in courtly salute to General Washington.  Gulian was beginning to learn that perhaps one might find something to be proud of in America, even if we were lacking in the rank and titles he so admired.

Oliver’s wedding, which was set for six o’clock, to allow the commander-in-chief to be present before the banquet at Fraunces’s Tavern, was to be on as grand a scale as Madam Cruger’s ideas could make it; for having consented to her daughter’s marriage, that stately dame proposed to yield in her most gracious fashion.  It took some time to dress Miss Moppet in the silken petticoat and puffed skirt, the tiny mobcap and white ribbons, which Kitty had considered proper for the occasion, and Betty found she must hasten her own toilet, or be late herself.  Moppet followed her up to the old room where Betty had spent so many hours of varied experience, and assisted to spread out once again the flowered brocade, which had not seen the light of day since the De Lancey ball.

“Here are your slippers, Betty; how nicely they fit your foot.”

“Yes,” said Betty, her thoughts far across the sea, as she slipped on one of them.

“I hope those are wedlock shoes,” quoth Moppet, with a queer, mischievous glance, as she tied the slipper strings around the slender ankle.  But Betty did not heed her; she was busy undoing the knots of rose-colored ribbon on the waist, which she had once placed there with such coquettish pride.

“What are you about?” cried Moppet, seizing her sister’s hand as she was in the act of snipping off one with the scissors.  “Oh, Betty, the gown will not be half so pretty without them.”

“Nay, child, rose-colored ribbons are not for me to-day; I am grown too old and sad,” said Betty softly, looking with tender eyes into Moppet’s face.