John looked up and winked. "Great scheme naming me after his Royal Highness," he said, in an undertone. "Sure road to the White House; they thought I'd make a good third."
Mrs. Grant went on, not having heard a word of John's aside: "This table you're eating from, once belonged to Mr. Adams. He gave it to my father, who often spent a week at a time with him in the White House."
"And I wish he was there now," interrupted Silas from the foot of the table. "He'd straighten out this snarl we're drifting into. Looks to me as if there would be some powder burnt before this thing is over. What do your people say about it?" and he nodded at Oliver. He had served the turkey, and was now sharpening the carver for the boiled ham, trying the edge with his thumb, as Shylock did.
"I haven't been at home for some time, sir," replied Oliver, in a courteous tone—he intended to be polite to the end—"and so I cannot say. My father's letters, seem to be very anxious, but mother doesn't think there'll be any trouble; at least she said so in her last letter."
Silas looked up from under the tufts of cotton-wool. Were the mothers running the politics of the South, he wondered?
"And there's another thing you folks might as well remember. We're not going to let you break up the Union, and we're not going to pay you for your slaves, either," and he plunged the fork into the ham that the spectacled waitress had laid before him and rose in his chair, the knife poised in his hand to carve it the better.
"Mr. Horn hasn't got any slaves to sell, father—didn't you hear him say so? His father freed his," laughed Margaret. Her father's positiveness never really worried her. She rather liked it at times. It was only because she had read in Oliver's face the impression her father was making upon him that she essayed to soften the force of his remarks.
"I heard him, Margaret, I heard him. Glad of it—but he's the only man from his parts that I ever heard who did. The others won't give 'em up so easy. They hung John Brown for trying to help the negroes free themselves, don't forget that." Oliver looked up and knitted his brows. Silas saw it. "I'm not meaning any offence to you, young man," he said quickly, waving the knife toward Oliver. "I'm taking this question on broad grounds. If I had my way I'd teach those slave-drivers—" and he buried the knife in the yielding ham, "that—"
"They did just right to hang him," interrupted John. "Brown was a fanatic, and ought to have stayed at home. No one is stronger than the law. That's where old Ossawatomie Brown made a mistake." Everybody was entitled to express his or her opinion in this house except the dear old mother. Margaret's fearless independence of manner and thought had been nurtured in fertile soil.
Mrs. Grant had been vainly trying to get the drift of the conversation, her hand behind her ear.