Rebecca Wentworth's Distraction by Robert J. Begiebing Page B

Surely even such a creature as Mr. Waldron could now benefit from our independence from Massachusetts, if he so chose. But one cannot expect a pompous ingrate to admit it.”
    He felt that he had her in his confidence now, and that she would speak well of him to her husband. But he was unable to witness that conversation or its result because Mr. Prescott did not return. After they had been sitting for some two hours together, anticipating her husband, it became clear he had been detained by more pressing matters to the proprietors. She asked after his plans to lodge, and he admitted he had none, that even Mr. Ladd had no knowledge of a lodging house.
    â€œThere is one being built to attach the tavern, but is unfinished,” she admitted. “However, Mrs. Sinclair, a widow, now takes in lodgers.” She told him how to find the Sinclair house. He made arrangements to return the next day to speak to Mr. Prescott. He decided to make a final bold inquiry, however, before taking his leave.
    â€œYou spoke of five children, Mrs. Prescott, but I have not seen nor heard them about the house or its environs. Are they all abroad today?” He gave her a cheery, light-hearted look.
    â€œThey are all engaged, sir, while the final light lasts, in the planting fields. It is, as you see, just Betty, who served us, and myself at home this evening. There is always so much to be done.”
    â€œI see,” he said and smiled. “Well, five children is a blessing, of course. They must be a great help and comfort to you. After the distemper, as I understand it, there were few families who escaped intact. So, you and your husband are twice blessed, to have five of your own dear children in your home.”
    â€œYes, we are,” she said, and then added as if in afterthought, “though one is my brother and sister-in-law’s child, Rebecca. The entire rest of her family were wiped out in the sickness.”
    â€œDear me. What a tragedy for your relations, Mrs. Prescott!”
    â€œIndeed, sir. She had lived with my husband’s cousin, Colonel William, for a time, but they decided she required the better air and discipline of rural life.” She smiled, as if she had been clever.
    Sanborn put on a look of some astonishment. “I might have met this young lady, briefly, while at Squire Browne’s, madam. She was quite a pretty child and showed me some paintings of her own.” He thought better, just yet, of explaining that he had painted the child.
    â€œThat is she, but there’s no time for painting and reading here; she has a more common round to occupy her now.”
    She seemed almost curt, so Sanborn did not detain the woman any longer; he took his leave, promising to return at the appointed time.

Chapter 13
    H IS HAY-FILLED MATTRESS at Mrs. Sinclair’s lay in a small but adequate room, and she was a friendly, bustling old lady. There was only one other lodger, who came to Sinclair’s later, to share the room. It was the officer in the provincial guard, Captain Carlyle from Londonderry. Sanborn now discovered he was traveling about the countryside to propose the best ways for roads and to assess the condition of peacetime garrisons, as if peace with the French were not expected to last indefinitely. And if in times of trouble, as he had heard, the men of the province preferred to enlist under a provincial officer rather than under a king’s regular, Governor Wentworth and Colonel Blanchard might have been grooming Captain Carlyle for future trust.
    Sanborn and Carlyle spoke not a word of what had passed at McGuire’s, but grew friendly over their jars of rum and molasses. One peculiarity was that Carlyle’s two great dogs went everywhere he did, inside and out, and they now slept wheezing like oversized lapdogs before Mrs. Sinclair’s kitchen fire while the men around the table in the fluttering light of candlewood spoke of their own adventures. Sanborn thought