“Don’t be prim, Betty.”

“I—­prim?”—­and Betty went off into a shout of girlish laughter, as she flung a pine needle at Peter, who dodged it successfully; “that I live to hear myself called what I have so often dubbed Pamela.  Fie, Peter, let Miranda dance if she will; I should love to see her.  It would be far more amusing than cards.”

“Betty,” said Peter, edging nearer her and lowering his voice to a whisper, “I heard that the Sons of Liberty had another placard up near the Vly Market last night, and that Sir Henry Clinton is in great wrath because they are growing daring again.  My! wouldn’t I just like to see one of them; but they say (so Pompey told me) that they are all around us in different disguises.  That’s why they’re so difficult to catch; it would go hard with them if the Hessians lay hands on the author of the placards.”

“But they will not; I heard Gulian say only last night that the cleverness with which the placards are prepared and placed was wonderful.  Who tells you these things, Peter?  Do have a care, for we are under Gulian’s roof, and he would be very angry if he knew that your and my sympathies are all on the side of the Whigs.”

“Oh, I hear things,” murmured Peter evasively.  Then whispering in Betty’s ear, “Did you ever hear Kitty speak of Billy the fiddler?”

“There’s no one within hearing,” said Betty, as she finished her twelfth wreath and laid it carefully on the floor beside her cricket.  “Get the other big branch outside the door, and sit down here close by me while you pull the twigs off; then you can tell me safely, for Clarissa is sleeping, and she will call me when she wakes.  Of course I never heard of the man you mention.”

Peter threw back his howl in a prolonged chuckle, as he followed Betty’s instructions and edged his cricket close to her elbow.

“Man!—­well, he’s more like a monkey than anything.  He only comes to my shoulder, and yet he’s old enough to be my father.”

“A dwarf, do you mean?”

“No, not precisely; the boys call him a manikin, for he’s not deformed; only very, very small; not above four feet high.  He is Dutch and has been a drummer, it’s whispered, in General Washington’s army.  They say he was in the battle of Harlem Lane, and beat the rally for our troops when Knowlton fell.  The Vly boys are great friends with him.”

“But, I thought you were at daggers drawn with the boys of the Vly Market, Peter?  Surely, you told me blood-curdling tales of the fights between them and you Broadway boys?”

“Oh, aye, but that’s for right of way” and don’t mean much except when we are actually punching each other’s heads.  Billy can tell great yarns; how his eyes flash when he speaks of the prison ships, though I only heard him once, when Jan Steen was talking foolish Tory stuff.”

“Do you think ‘Billy the fiddler,’ as you call him, is one of the Sons of Liberty?”