CHAPTER V
THE PELL-MELL AND SOME CONSEQUENCES
It was late in the afternoon when the secretary to the President looked up from the crowded desk. “Mr. Jefferson,” ventured he, “you will pardon me——”
“Yes, my son?”
“It grows late. You know that today the British minister, Mr. Merry, comes to meet the President for the first time formally—at dinner. Señor Yrujo also—and their ladies, of course. Mr. Burr and Mr. Merry seem already acquainted. I met them riding this morning.”
“Hand and glove, then, so soon? What do you make of it? I have a guess that those three—Burr, Merry, Yrujo—mean this administration no special good. And yet it was I myself who kept our Spanish friend from getting his passports back to Madrid. I did that only because of his marriage to the daughter of my friend, Governor McKean, of Pennsylvania. But what were you saying now?”
“I thought perhaps I should go to my rooms to change for dinner. You see that I am still in riding-clothes.”
“And what of that, my son? I am in something worse!”