Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/169

Rh houses of very rich people were just about as unromantic a hundred and twenty years ago as they are to-day,” responded Amy. “But there’s the old Bowden House over there on the hill. Michael Bowden was a Loyalist, but he was n’t as unpopular as some of them, and so when another  Loyalist sought refuge in his house from an angry mob, he  promised to protect him. Well, the crowd rushed into the house, and Mrs. Bowden tried to keep them from going  farther than the sitting-room.

“‘I can assure you, gentlemen,’ she said, ‘that the man you seek is not under my roof. If you make any greater disturbance, you may cause the death of my sick daughter.’

“So the citizens did not go any farther. They believed Mrs. Bowden.”

“But the man was in the house, was n’t he?”

“Well, it seems that he was on the roof, hiding behind one of the big chimneys. So that in one way Mrs. Bowden told the truth.”

“I did n’t know there were so many Loyalists in this part of the world,” said Nora, as Julia pointed out a house  on the opposite side of the Square which Amy said had  belonged to Benjamin Watson, a prominent Tory.

“Oh, well, my mother says that Marblehead was rich then, that Boston was the only town that was richer, and  some of the merchants, fearing that their business would be  disturbed, were on the side of England.”

“Where is the very oldest house of all?” asked Julia; “these up here look almost too comfortable and modern,  even if they are more than one hundred years old.”