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George Tucker never went to bed. "Hooraw!" roared Long Snapps, trundling in to dinner, the next day; "they're wakin' up down to Bostin! Good many on 'em's quit the town. Them 'are Britishers is a-gettin' up sech a breeze; an' they doo say the reg'lars is comin' out full sail, to cair' off all the amminition in these parts, fear o' mutiny 'mongst the milishy!"
Long Snapps had been, in his own phrase, "weather-bound" at Westbury, and was there still, safe in the chimney-corner, his shrewd face puckered with thought and care, his steady old heart full of resolute bravery, and longing for the time to come; flint and steel ready to strike fire on the slightest collision.
What kind be they?" "English pippins, ma'am." "Dew tell! be you a-goin to hev one, Sally?" "No, Aunt Poll! I don't want any thin' English 'round!" The three young men grinned and chuckled. George Tucker turned red. "Hooray for you, Sally!" sung out old Snapps. "You're a three-decker, ef ever there was 'un!"
She was married to George Tucker, and, with the prospect of a crippled husband for life, was perfectly happy; too happy not to laugh, when, the day after their wedding, sitting on the door-sill of the old Westbury homestead, with George and Long Snapps, George said, "Would you ever have come to take care of me, Sally, if I'd 'a' been shot on the side of the reg'lars?"
Stick to the ship, Miss Sally; give a heave at the windlass now'n then, an' don't let nary one o' them fellers that comes a buzzin' round you the hull time turn his back on Yankee Doodle; an' you won't never hanker to be a man, ef 'tis war-time!" Sally's eyes burned bluer than before. "Thank you kindly, Mister Snapps. I'm obleeged to you for putting the good thought into my head.
They were not nice according to Swift's definition, nor proper in the mode of the best society, but they were good and pure; are the disciples and lecturers of the 'proper' equally so? Sally's simple preparations were quickly made. By nine o'clock she was safe on the pillion behind Long Snapps, folded in Aunt Poll's red joseph, and provided with saddle-bags full of comforts and necessaries.
Bostin's full o' them Britishers, sech as scomfishkated the Susan Jane, cos our skipper done suthin' he hedn't oughter, or didn't do suthin' he hed oughter; and I tell yew the end o' things is nigh about comin' on here!" Sally, in the chimney corner, heard Long Snapps with open eyes, and hitching her wooden chair nearer, inquired solemnly, "What do you mean, Mister Snapps?
"There don't everythin' come jest square about seein' things," interposed Long Snapps; "folks hed better steer by facts sometimes, than by yarns.
One Sunday night, early in April, after the nine o'clock bell had scattered Sally's admirers far and wide, and old 'Zekiel sat by the chimney corner, watching his sister, Aunt Poll, rake up the rest of the hickory log in the ashes, while he rubbed away sturdily at his feet, holding in one hand the blue yarn stockings, "wrought by no hand, as you may guess," but that of Sally; the talk, that had momentarily died away, began again, and with a glance at Long Snapps, a lank, shrewd-faced old sailor, who, to use his own speech, had "cast anchor 'longside of an old ship-met fur a spell, bein' bound fur his own cabin up in Lenox," 'Zekiel spoke after this wise:
Now I believe the Lord lets folks find out what He does, out o' Scriptur; and I han't found nothin' yet to tell about kings bein' better than their neighbours, and it don't look as ef this king was so clever as common. I s'pose you ha'n't heerd what our Colony Congress is a-doin', hev ye, Snapps?" "Well, no, I ha'n't.
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