III.
THE SONS OF LIBERTY.
“Is it far to Doctor Warren’s house?” Robert asked of the landlord after supper.
“Oh no, only a few steps around the corner on Hanover Street. So you are going to call on him, just as your father always does. You will find him a nice gentleman. He is kind to the poor, charging little or nothing when they are sick and need doctoring. He isn’t quite thirty years old, but there isn’t a doctor in town that has a larger practice. He is a true patriot. I heard a man say the other day that if Joe Warren would only let politics alone he would soon be riding in his own coach. The rich Tories don’t like him much. They say it was he who gave Governor Bernard such a scorching in Ben Edes’s newspaper awhile ago. He is eloquent when he gets fired up. You ought to hear him in town meeting; you won’t find him stuck up one mite; you can talk with him just as you do with me.”
With the cheese under his arm Robert walked along Hanover Street to Doctor Warren’s house[17]. It was a wooden building standing end to the road. Entering a small yard, he rattled the knocker on the door. The doctor opened it.
“Good-evening; will you walk in?” he said. It was a pleasant, cheery voice, one to make a sick person feel well.
“Please step into the office.”
Robert entered a room smelling of rhubarb, jalap, ipecac, and other medicines in bottles and packages on the shelves.