I joined Lizzie and a group of other women in making sandwiches and packing picnic baskets. We’d just finished the last basket when a shrill whistle sounded, and we went outside with our baskets to find Bessie the steam engine with two omnibuses hitched behind her. Alec was in his usual place on the engine itself, next to the driver, and I blew him a kiss, which he returned with a smile. I suddenly felt much better about this outing. We’d be doing a good deed while I got to spend time with my sweetheart—I presumed I could safely call him that after the kisses we’d shared.

Colin once again played conductor, helping the ladies onto the bus with a tip of his bowler hat. Once we were all on board, the engine moved more sedately than it had on that fateful trip my first day in the city, perhaps because of its greater load and perhaps because they didn’t want to attract trouble.

While we journeyed farther downtown, Colin lectured us on the plan, shouting to make himself heard over the chugging of the engine. “Give the soldiers no reason to feel threatened by you, no excuse to fire on you. Only the girls and children are to approach the soldiers. We don’t want any bloodshed today, and they won’t either. Is that understood?” As soon as everyone had acknowledged him, Colin grinned broadly and led us in a rousing chorus of “Yankee Doodle.”

The engine stopped on a lower block of the Bowery, and Alec sounded the steam whistle. Children playing on the sidewalks stopped their games, and adults conversing or haggling turned to stare. Others gradually emerged from the tenement buildings and alleys to gawk at the great machine. I’d expected them to be awestruck, as I had been on my first encounter with it, but they looked at the engine, the buses, and us with suspicion, if not outright hostility. While some of the smaller children cowered behind their mothers’ skirts, the older ones moved closer to the engine, and without the boyish enthusiasm Rollo would have shown. To them, we seemed to be unwelcome invaders.

“Don’t look now, but I believe we’re surrounded,” Colin muttered.

I knew then that none of us had planned for the real trouble we’d face in this endeavor.

In Which We Face Young Criminals and Traitors

IN WHICH WE FACE YOUNG CRIMINALS AND TRAITORS

“They know why we’re here, don’t they?” I asked Lizzie.

“I told a few people, and I thought they’d spread the word,” she replied without taking her eyes off the crowd surrounding us. “They’re here, so they must know, right?”

“Whether they want us to be here is another story,” Colin said.