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 sacrifice she was making. "Could I have a better way o' using my wedding clothes than to gi' my two little maids a happy time?" she said. She looked over at her husband. "Ye do not mind my cutting up the two gowns, Samuel?" she asked.

Silently, Squire Condit shook his head in answer. A swift memory of the young and lovely bride who, proudly attired in those same gowns, had walked out to church the first happy Sundays of married life came to him. But, too, there followed swiftly upon the heels of that memory the picture of barefooted men leaving bloody footprints in the virgin snow, of hungry men turning away from the quartermaster's office with half rations—a hunk of bread or a piece of meat; but never both together for days at a time—of a commander, greater than his country realized, pondering sadly, with careworn face, those problems which an unruly Congress hindered rather than helped to solve—all this came to Squire Condit's mind, and he knew that money, even for the most simple party gowns, was not forthcoming in that patriotic household. And that the only way Mehitable and Charity could go properly attired to any rout in Morris Town was as their mother was now planning.

The Squire's eyes, however, were very tender as they rested upon his wife, and he soon took occasion in passing her to pat the work-gnarled hand that held a knitting needle. It was only one of many