Rodney’s boyish prejudices were in favour of everything Jefferson did, and he was impatient with those, and they were the greater number, who wished to delay decisive action in the hope of conciliation. This prejudice extended to the Quakers in their broad-brimmed hats, nearly all of whom were opposed to war.
Boys are usually impatient, unable to work and wait and keep working, as the wise men of that Congress were doing.
The boy had but part of two days in the city, which was the first he had seen and consequently full of interest; so he did not call on Lisbeth, indeed, had there been plenty of time he would have hesitated in his rough dress of homespun to have presented himself before her aristocratic friends.
The day he turned Nat’s nose in the direction of Virginia a young man rode alongside and said, “Why, this is an unexpected pleasure, if as I suspect, you are on your way home.”
He was Lawrence Enderwood. Rodney’s reply was almost surly, as several reasons for Enderwood’s presence in Philadelphia flashed through his mind.
“I’m not going directly home but by way of Williamsburg. I live in Albemarle County.”
“I, too, am riding by way of Williamsburg, and if you have no objections to my company should be delighted to join you. It is a long ride.”
Rodney could offer no objections, indeed, as they went on, he found his companion a very agreeable one, notwithstanding that in course of the conversation 185 it appeared that Lawrence had seen Lisbeth.
“She is very gay, seems to be absorbed in the gaieties and social life so that she has little time for anything else.” Somehow this remark of Enderwood, spoken rather impatiently, afforded Rodney a little comfort, though he hardly could have explained it.
On arriving at Williamsburg, they found the little town well filled, for Governor Dunmore had convened the House of Burgesses to listen to Lord North’s plans for conciliation.