The transition to David Owen’s manner was so abrupt that Peggy smiled through her tears.
“I did not know that thee was possessed of the art of mimicry, my cousin,” she remarked. “Harriet hath it to perfection, but thee has never shown sign of it before.”
“’Tis only one whom I know well that I can mimic,” he told her. “Sometimes, I believe that I know Cousin David better than father.”
“And thou shouldst have been my father’s son,” she cried. “Why, thee looks enough like him to be his son. Then thee would have been my brother, as thou shouldst have been.”
Clifford smiled at her warmth.
“In that case,” he said quizzically, “I should have been an American. I wonder if I should have been a Quaker, and a rebel with the rest of you? Or should I have been a Tory?”
“Oh, a rebel! A rebel!” she replied promptly, pleased that his melancholy was vanishing.
“I doubt it. I cannot imagine myself as other than loyal to my king any more than I can think of myself as a Quaker.”
“Neither can I think of thee as a Quaker,” she said. “Some way thee doesn’t fit in with the Society.”
At this Clifford laughed outright.