The Railroad War Read Online Free PDF Page B

knoll.” He turned to Miranda. “Well?” he asked her.
    “I’d love that,” she said, beaming.
    “You see?” Ashbel said.
    “But your
burn?”
Fanny said to her daughter.
    “I can scarcely feel it.”
    “But will the boys be free for the rest of the afternoon?” Fanny said, unwilling to give in completely. “They must have to
     prepare for tomorrow.”
    “I’m sure they will find a way to be free, Fanny. They are resourceful young men.” Then to Ariel: “You’d like that, wouldn’t
     you, dear?”
    “I’d like to spend time with the cadets very much,” she said.
    “It’s a good thing to be free, isn’t it?” he said with an exaggeratedly straight face and laughing eyes. “You must be delighted,
     now that you are here at West Point, that you haven’t been spoken for already.”
    “But she is engaged to Ben Edge,” Fanny said.
    “Mother,” Ariel said, “I… um… I’ve…” As she stammered, she shot a glance back over her shoulder to make sure that Sam and Noah
     were still out of earshot.
    “Ariel has chosen,” Ashbel broke in, taking her off the hook, “to keep that knowledge a secret during her stay at the Academy.”
    “Oh, she has, has she?” Fanny said, laughing. She threw her head back and laughed some more. “Well, I won’t be the one to
     tell on her—on you,” she said with a sharp but amused look at her older daughter. “Does Lamar know of this… prevarication?”
    “Yes, Mother. I took him aside and talked to him earlier.”
    “Well, then,” Fanny said, rubbing her hands together in a washing motion, “off with both of you. Clean yourselves up and change
     into something appropriate for a walk in the woods.”
    “Oh, thank you, Mother,” the girls said as one. And both of them rushed up and kissed her on the cheek.
    “You’ll tell the boys?” Fanny said to Ashbel.
    “I’ll pass them the word about their good luck,” he said. “I only wish I could go with them.”
    “So do I,” Fanny said with a grin.
    “Well then,
Miss
Frances Shaw, let us not let the children exhaust the available pleasure. You and I will also go for a stroll in the woods.”
    “Oh, no, Ash,” she said with a laugh and a shake of her head, “I couldn’t possibly. I have much too much to do to get ready.”
    “Put it off, Fanny. Come with me.”
    “I can’t. I really mustn’t,” she said, and mounted the steps of the hotel porch. At the top of the steps, she turned back
     to him. “You know, Ash, I think I married the wrong Kemble.”
    “I knew that twenty years go, Miss Frances Shaw.”
    Ashbel Kemble’s scheme for the afternoon outing was the splendid success that he wished it to be, which is not to say that
     all went smoothly for the cadets and the Kemble sisters. Even so, the rough moments did not detract from the pleasures of
     the occasion. If anything, they added to the excitement and gave it seasoning. By the time the outing was over, Miranda and
     Ariel knew they’d spent a perfectly glorious time with their brother and his two friends. And for reasons that they did not
     immediately recognize, both girls would remember this afternoon for the rest of their lives.
    It was Sam Hawken and Noah Ballard, of course, who most occupied the two girls. For they were both vivid, fascinating, and
     handsome—and wonderfully unlike the other young men Ariel and Miranda had yet encountered.
    There were vast worlds of difference between the two cadets and the witty and amusing yet so wilting boys the girls were condemned
     to dance with in Philadelphia at the cotillions sanctioned by Miss Lancaster’s Atheneum, which was the boarding school the
     sisters attended in that city. The boys of Philadelphia were full of charm and airy words, but not one of them had ever felt
     the slightest temptation to taste a meaty thought.
    Miranda liked to laugh, but she liked to think, too.
    She was pleased that Noah and Sam were not strangers to charm, but she was just as pleased that they