“I would like to look at your brooches.”
While the goldsmith was taking them from the showcase, he glanced at the pictures on the walls, printed from plates which Mr. Revere had engraved.
The brooches were beautiful—ruby, onyx, sapphire, emerald, but after examining them he turned once more to the beads.
“They are eighteen carats fine, and will not grow dim with use. I think your sister will be delighted with them.”
Robert thought so too, and felt a glow of pleasure when they were packed in soft paper and transferred from the case to his pocket.
With the afternoon before him he strolled the streets, looking at articles in the shop windows, at the clock on the Old Brick Meetinghouse, the barracks of the soldiers,—the king’s Twenty-Ninth Regiment.[14] Some of the redcoats were polishing their gun barrels and bayonets, others smoking their pipes. Beyond the barracks a little distance he saw Mr. Gray’s ropewalk. He turned through Mackerel Lane and came to the Bunch of Grapes Tavern,[15] and just beyond it the Admiral Vernon. He strolled to Long Wharf. The king’s warship, Romney, was riding at anchor near by, and a stately merchant ship was coming up the harbor. The fragrance of the sea was in the air. Upon the wharf were hogsheads of molasses unloaded from a vessel just arrived from Jamaica. Boys had knocked out a bung and were running a stick into the hole and lapping the molasses. The sailors lounging on the wharf were speaking a language he could not understand. For the first time in his life he was in touch, as it were, with the great world beyond the sea.
During the day he had met several of the king’s soldiers, swaggering along the streets as if privileged to do as they pleased, regardless of the people. Two, whom he had seen drinking toddy in the Admiral Vernon, swayed against him.
“Hello, clodhopper! How’s yer dad and marm?” said one.
Robert felt the hot blood mount to his brow.
“Say, bumpkin, how did ye get away from your ma’s apron-string?” said the other.