"Sir," said I, making Toby advance and bowing to his mane, "as we are travelling the same way, will you permit us to accompany you? My friend is Richard Ringgold of Hunting Field and I am James Frisby of Fairlee."
"It will give me pleasure," he replied, saluting courteously, "to have your company to the Head of Elk. I know your families and your houses well, and you, no doubt, have heard of me, Charles Gordon of the Braes."
"That we have," said Dick Ringgold. "It was only a week ago that my mother spoke of your first coming to old Kent."
"It was kind of her to remember me," he replied. "She was a great belle and a beauty in her youth."
Dick smiled with pleasure, and I, taking advantage of a narrow place in the road, fell behind, and rode so I could talk to Mistress Jean, much to Master Richard's secret indignation. But she received me with a show of displeasure, and though I courteously asked her of her journey, it was some minutes before I knew the cause thereof.
"Are you not," said she, and her aristocratic little head was in the air, "afraid to be seen riding with suspected Tories, you who wear the black cockade?"
And then I remembered that I wore the emblem of our party.
"Afraid!" I replied. "Afraid! We who have bearded the Ministers of the Crown in the broad light of day? Do you think I am afraid of our own men? Why, if Mistress North herself were half as fair as your ladyship of the Braes, I would ride with her through all the armies of the patriots, and no man would dare say me nay."
A merry twinkle came into her eyes. "Would you wear the red cockade if she should ask you?"
"Ah, Mistress Jean, would you seduce me from my allegiance to the cause of the patriots?"