A Little Girl in Old Pittsburg. Douglas Amanda M.
storms;" with a triumphant air.
"Get the board and let's have a game. You're so smart I feel it in my bones that you will beat."
She put Judy down very gently, but the cat switched her tail around and wondered why. She brought out the board that was marked like "Tit tat toe," and a box that she rattled laughingly. Pussy came when they had adjusted it on their knees and put two white paws on it, preparatory to a jump.
"Oh, Judy, I can't have you now. Come round and sit by the fire."
Judy went round to the back of Dilly's chair and washed over both ears in a very indignant manner.
The play was Fox and Geese. There was one red grain of corn for the fox and all the geese were white. One block at the side was left vacant. If you could pen the fox in there without losing a goose or at the most two or three, you were the winner. But if once you let the fox out the geese had to fly for their lives. Grandfather often let the little girl beat.
He was very fond of her, and he was a sweet-natured old man who liked to bestow what pleasure he could. Just now he was feeling impatient for the news and wanted to pass away the time.
Dilly was quite shrewd, too, for a little girl not yet seven. She considered now and moved a far off goose, and the fox knew that was sour grapes.
"Oh, you're a sharp one!" exclaimed grandfather. "I'll have to mind how I doze on this bout."
But alas! On the next move she let him in a little way, then she fenced him out again, and lost one goose repairing her defences. But it wasn't a bad move. The great art was to keep one goose behind another for protection. He couldn't jump over but one at a time.
She beat grandfather, who pretended to be quite put out about it and said she'd do for an army general. Grandmother was making a pumpkin pudding with milk and eggs and sugar and stick-cinnamon, which was quite a luxury. Then she poured it into an iron pan that stood upon little feet, drew out a bed of coal, and plumped it down. The cover had a rim around the top, and she placed some coals on the top of this. She baked her bread in it, too. Stoves were great luxuries and costly. Then she laid some potatoes in the hot ashes and hung a kettle of turnips on the crane.
Grandfather and the little girl had another game and she was the fox this time and lost, getting penned up.
"Grandfather," she said sagely, "if you know the good early moves and don't make any mistake, you're sure to win."
"I believe that is so. You're getting a stock of wisdom, Dilly. Oh, won't your father be surprised when he comes home. You were a mere baby when he went away."
She was an oddly pretty child. Her hair was really yellow, soft and curly, then her eyes were of so dark a blue that you often thought them black. The eyebrows and lashes were dark, the nose rather piquant, the mouth sweet and rosy, curved, with dimples in the corners. But in those days no one thought much about beauty in children.
The door was flung open.
"Ugh!" ejaculated Gran Bradin. "It's fairly wintry. Fire feels good! The news is just glorious! They headed off Cornwallis after having destroyed their fortifications and dismantled their cannon. The British works were so in ruins they tried escape. One section of troops crossed over to Glous'ter Point, but a storm set in and dispersed the boats. There was nothing left but surrender. So the great army and the great general who were to give us the finishing stroke, handed in their capitulation to General Washington. There are between seven and eight thousand prisoners and all the shipping in the harbor. Grandfather, you may be proud. We had, it is thought, seven thousand French troops, with Count De Rochambeau, and Count De Grasse."
He reached over and wrung grandfather's slim white hand with its tracery of blue veins. Then he kissed his wife. "They've been good friends to us. We'll never forget that!"
"And the war is over?"
"Not exactly that. We've yet to dislodge them from various places. But they think now England will be willing to treat. And we'll have a country of our own! Well, it was three weeks ago."
There were no telegraphs, and only the more important places had post roads. Pittsburg was quite out of the way. It had no dreams of grandeur in those days, and about its only claim to eminence was Braddock's defeat.
"Lang brought some copies of the Philadelphia Gazette, but you couldn't get near one, they were rushed off so. But we'll hear it all in a few days. Too much good news might puff us up with vain glory. We may look for letters any day. Such a splendid victory!"
Grandfather was wiping the tears from his eyes. Marc Bradin went in to comfort his daughter, though he could hardly forbear smiling with a sense of inward amusement as he thought of Sandy Carrick, who had as good as disowned his son for joining the Colonial army. He'd be glad enough to have him back again. Though he had been rather disgruntled at his marrying Barbe Bradin because she had French blood in her veins, as if the Irish Bradin could not in some degree counteract that!
Sandy Carrick had been in the sore battle of Braddock's defeat. But after all the cowardly French had thought retreat the better part of valor and left the Fort that had been partly burned, left that section as well, and the government had erected the new Fort Pitt. He insisted that the French had been really driven out. They certainly had been checked in their advance to the Mississippi.
Pittsburg was a conglomerate in these early days. Welsh, Irish, and English had contributed to its then small population of the few hundreds whose history and beginning were like so many other emigrants. The houses were ranged largely about the Fort for protection from the Indians. There were small crooked lanes, a few dignified by-streets, Penn Street, Duquesne way, Water and Ferry streets. Colonel George Morgan had built a double-hewn log house of considerable dimensions, the first house in the settlement to have a shingle roof. Though the "Manor of Pittsburg" had been surveyed and Fort Pitt had been abandoned by the British under orders of General Gage and occupied by Virginia troops under Captain John Neville.
There were some French residents, some Acadians as well, and a few Virginians who were mostly refugees. The houses were of very primitive construction, generally built of logs, but made comfortable on the inside. The emigrants had brought their industries with them. The women spun and knit, there were several rude looms, but they depended largely on Philadelphia for supplies.
Pierre Duvernay had fled to Ireland in one of the Huguenot persecutions, but more fortunate than many, he had been able to take some of his worldly possessions. Here his only daughter had married Marc Bradin, his only son had died, and his wife had followed. Broken-hearted he had accompanied his daughter and son-in-law to the new Colonies. They had spent a few years in Virginia, then with some French friends had come to Pittsburg and bought a large holding, which seemed at the time a misadventure, and so they had built in nearer to the Fort. Here pretty Barbe Bradin had grown up and married Bernard Carrick, their neighbor's son, but they had not let the hospitable Bradin home. Here Daffodil had been born, and the French and Irish blended again.
"What made you call me Daffodil?" the child said one day to her mother. "You were named after your mother and gran'mere after hers, and you should have called me Barbe."
"It would have made no end of confusion. You see it does with great-grandfather. And when you were born it was lovely sunshiny weather and the daffodils were in bloom with their tender gold. Then you had such a funny fuzzy yellow head. I loved the Daffodils so. They come so early and look so cheerful, and you were such a cheerful baby, always ready to smile."
"Do you suppose my hair will always stay yellow?"
"Oh, no. It will grow darker."
"Like yours?"
"Well, perhaps not quite as dark. I like it. You are my spring. If I were in any sorrow, your brightness would comfort me."
Then the sorrow came. The young husband felt it his duty to join the struggling army and fight for his country. It was in doubtful times.
This queer, rural, primitive settlement knew little about the great causes. Since the new fort had been built and the French repulsed, absolutely driven out of their strongholds, there had been only the infrequent Indian encounters to rouse them. The stern resolves, the mighty enthusiasm of the Eastern Colonies had not inspired them. Even the Declaration