Aaron Burr, Acting Colonel.
“There!” thinks he, when the last letter is signed, sealed, and sent upon its way to the popinjay hand for which it is designed, “that should do nicely. I’ve ever held that the way to successfully deal with humanity is to take humanity by the horns. That I’ve done. Likewise, I flatter myself I’ve constructed my net so fine that none of them can wriggle through. And as for breaking through by the dueling method I hint at, I shall have guessed vastly to one side, if the best among them own either the force or courage to so much as make the attempt.”
Young Aaron is justified of his perspicacity. The resignations of the popinjays come pouring in, each seeming to take the initiative, and basing his “voluntary” abandonment of a military career on grounds wholly invented and highly honorable to himself. No reference, even of the blindest, is made to that brilliant usurpation of authority. Neither is young Aaron’s letter alluded to in any conversation.
There is one exception; a popinjay personage named Rawls, retorts in a hectic epistle which, while conveying his resignation, avows a determination to welter in young Aaron’s blood as a slight solace for the outrage done his feelings. To this, young Aaron replies that he shall, on the very next day, do himself the honor of a call upon the ill-used and flaming Rawls, whose paternal roof is not an hour’s gallop from the Ramapo. Accordingly, young Aaron repairs to the Rawls’s mansion at eleven of next day’s clock. He has with him two officers, who are dark as to the true purpose of the excursion.
Young Aaron and the accompanying duo are asked to dinner by the Rawls’s household. The popinjay fiery Rawls is present, but embarrassed. After dinner, when young Aaron asks popinjay Rawls to ride with his party a mile or two on the return journey, the fiery, ill-used one grows more embarrassed.
He does not, however, ride forth on that suggested mission of honor; his alarmed sisters, of whom there are an angelic three, rush to his rescue in a flood of terrified exclamation.
“O Colonel Burr!” they chorus, “what are you about to do with Neddy?”
“My dear young ladies,” protests young Aaron suavely, “believe me, I’m about to do nothing with Neddy. I intend only to ask him what he desires or designs to do with me. I am here to place myself at Neddy’s disposal, in a matter which he well understands.”
The interfering angelic sisterly ones declare that popinjay Neddy meant nothing by his letter, and will never write another. Whereupon young Aaron observes he will be content with the understanding that popinjay Neddy send him no more letters, unless they have been first submitted to the sisterly censorship of the angelic three. To this everyone concerned most rapturously consents; following which young Aaron goes back to his camp by the Ramapo, while the sisterly angelic ones festoon themselves about the neck of popinjay Neddy, over whom they weepingly rejoice as over one returned from out the blackness of the shadow of death.