"There showed the measure of the man. He is, to-day, the Commissary-General of the Province, and member of his Excellency's Council, and no one is so close to Governor Sharpe as is he."
"A pretty enough story," said Parkington; "do you think it is true?"
"We have no doubt of it."
"Well," observed Parkington, "one warms to him marvelously easy. What ailed the lady, that she chose the subaltern when she could have had the master?"
Mr. Paca laughed. "Women are a law unto themselves!" he said; "and Ridout is marvelously handsome and nearer her own age." A gurgle, ending in a prolonged snore, came from the chair beside him. "Ah! Cole slumbers. We shall hear from him no more to-night."
Presently, the talk veered over to politics. Notice of the Stamp Act being repealed had come to the Colony a month before, and had been made the occasion for an ardent demonstration, though, as a matter of fact, it had been a dead statute and unenforcible, in Maryland, from the moment of its passage. An act, once it is off the books, may be condemned in most disloyal language, and no offense be given, even if it were the pet measure of a sovereign. But George the Third was a stubborn monarch, and no sooner was the Stamp Act null and void, than a new hobby was his, and one that required no legislation to support it. And Samuel Chase, with a fine ignoring of the proprieties, soon hit upon it.
"I understand," said he, "that recently an application for land, beyond the Allegheny Mountains, was refused by the Board of Trade, in London."
Parkington was silent. Paca and Hammond both tried to change the conversation, but Chase would not have it.
"The Board of Trade will find itself ignored," he said. "There will not be any applications. The people will simply settle, and, when they are settled, nothing but a royal army will move them off; and when a royal army invades this country, for such a purpose, it means war."