“Yes,” he answered rudely. “So are you.”
At this moment Captain Lewin entered, so that the discussion came to an end before it had well begun, like most discussions of the kind.
Captain Lewin was a tall, grey, upright man, with a sharp, dictatorial manner that was somehow not authoritative, and therefore not offensive. He entered the room with his hands behind his back, snapping quickly from the nervous strain of being late. Howard greeted him and introduced him. He sat down nervously on his host’s left, looked round the room with the quick apprehension of an animal, much as he would have looked aloft on coming on deck, and began to apologize for his lateness.
“I dined before I left the ship,” he said. “That rascal, my purser, kept me. Very good claret, your Excellency. Who’s the man next but one on my left? I seem to know his face.”
“Stukeley. Thomas Stukeley, husband of the lady here,” the Governor answered in a low voice.
“I seem to have seen him somewhere. Wasn’t he in the rising in Beverley’s time?”
“No, captain.”
“Reminds me of that beauty who led us such a dance up the Delaware.”
“Oh, George Bond?”
“Yes. He was a beauty. I wonder what’s become of George Bond?”