ROSE.  I should prefer remaining here.

ELSWORTH.  Would it be safe, Rose?

ROSE.  Yes, for we neutralize each other.  Your loyalty will secure you with the Tories, and my Whiggism will protect us with the other faction.

ELSWORTH.  Your Whiggism, Rose?  You shock me by such an avowal; and your brother, too, an officer of the King.

KATE.  I don’t think there is much danger, if Mr. Armstrong is near to protect us.

ELSWORTH.  Mr. Armstrong?

KATE.  Oh, yes, papa!  He’s got to be a captain.

ELSWORTH.  Not a rebel, I trust.

ROSE.  Not a traitor, I thank heaven.

ELSWORTH.  You confound terms strangely.  A traitor is one false to his king.

ROSE.  False to his country, sir.  A king is a creature of to-day—­your country a thing of immortality.

ELSWORTH.  Your King is your sovereign, by divine right and true succession.

ROSE.  Then, sir, serve the Stuarts.  How came the house of Hanover upon the throne?  You see, sir, that if you zealous loyalists could shift off James, we, with less belief in the divine right of kings, can shift off George.

Enter MR. APOLLO METCALF.

METCALF.  Good day, Mr. Elsworth.  Good day, young ladies.  “Good day” all, I may say.

ELSWORTH.  Have you any news of the war, Mr. Metcalf?

METCALF.  News—­plenty of it, and mad.  The country is depopulated.  There isn’t a youth with the first hope of a beard upon his chin, who hasn’t gone with young Armstrong, to join the army.

ELSWORTH.  Young Armstrong?

METCALF.  To be sure, sir.  He’s turned out a fiery rebel, after all—­and a captain, to boot.

ELSWORTH.  Heaven bless me, but this is very sad.  A promising youth to be led astray!  Dear me, dear me!  Rose, I am very sorry to say that this is certainly your fault.  You have filled him with your wild, radical, and absurd heroic rhapsodies.  You have made him disloyal to his King.  You have put a dagger in his hand, to stab at the heart of his country.  Alas!  I see what the end will be—­disgrace and death, ignominy and the gallows.

[ROSE walks back to the window.

KATE.  Mr. Metcalf, how are your little charges?  How flourishes the birch?

METCALF.  They’ve all caught the spirit of the rebellion, marm, and are as untractable as bulls.  Bless you, there isn’t a lad over fourteen who hasn’t abandoned his horn-book and gone off with Armstrong.  And as for the girls, they’re greater rebels than the boys.  What do you think, marm?  The other day they came marching in procession, and demanded to know on which side I was.  I said “God save the King;” whereupon they fell upon me like a swarm of bees, armed with a thousand pins, and so pinched, and pricked, and pulled me, that there wasn’t a square inch of my skin that wasn’t as full of holes as a ten-year old pin-cushion.  And I do believe they never would have stopped if I hadn’t cried, “Huzza for Washington!”