Will to-morrow do?"
"Oh, yes, I shall be glad to help the cause, even so little as that,"
she answered. Pepperell thanked her for her words, and ignored the look
of disappointment that he had seen flit across her face before she
spoke.
"We have been putting up a fascine battery within two hundred and
fifteen yards of the west gate," he said, "It will open fire in an hour,
and then you will see a cannonade! We have two forty-two pounders there,
it will be no child's play." Nothing had then hinted at the Titanic
scale of modern war engines. Elizabeth's eyes dilated, but she said
nothing. The General sat beside her, and asked how things were going on
in Boston, asked about his friends, and many trifling details that
neither dispatches nor letters would give him, and that she wondered
that he had heart for in the scenes going on about him. Then he told
them many particulars of the siege and especially of the terrible labor
of dragging the heavy guns from the shore into position, interspersing
all this narrative of the life-and-death struggles with amusing
anecdotes and bright comments, until she was amazed, and in listening
found that she had gained a better knowledge of him than in years of
ordinary acquaintance.
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