A week had passed, and Philip wasn't spending the entire day out of his house anymore. In fact, he stopped doing that by our third encounter, if I remember correctly. Sure, he would take a walk by himself once in a while, but mostly, he was around to help his mother in whatever way he could. If I may say, I felt extremely proud of him for this.
Other than his occasional strolls, the only time he would be out would be that of our arranged meetings. Those had become routine. We had even developed a system to cover them and make sure our respective families wouldn't suspect of us leaving the house every day at the same time with no apparent reason. So, instead of saying I was out for pointless walks on a daily basis, somedays I would say I was leaving to buy bread, which would ensue a trip to the bakery. Others, I'd say I wanted to find fruits at the market, or vegetables, or even flowers.
Somedays, we'd go to the bakery or the market together, but only in days where there weren't many people around. Most of the time, we'd go in turns, or I'd go and he would wait for me at the park. You see, he did not need an excuse as much as I did, considering that in his house they weren't worrying that much about his whereabouts at the time. There were… bigger concerns, clearly. In mine, however, being gone would have been something easy to notice. I was terrified of my mother asking why I was leaving for walks so much all of a sudden, or if there was someone I was meeting.
The reason for that, of course, was that even mentioning Philip Hamilton would have been problematic. That was something Philip and I could agree in. Even though there was nothing inherently wrong with us meeting, our fathers would have definitely frowned upon it. It was one thing to be polite to one another when we were forced to interact, but it was completely different to purposefully become friends.
Especially at that time, Dad was wary of any mention of the Hamiltons around the house. The scandal was still fresh and their name, still quite stained. Philip, on the other hand, didn't want to bring any other reason for distress to the household, as small as it would have seemed.
That was why, whenever we met, we tried to be seen in public places as little as possible. One could never be too cautious.