Involuntarily Adam turned about to look at the beef-eaters. Their eyes had abruptly taken on a preternatural brightness at the word dinner.
“I have much to ask you and much to tell you,” Phipps added. “And the goodwife would exact this honor if she knew you were come.”
The invitation did not include Adam’s retinue. He swallowed, as if the delicious odors of one of Goodwife Phipp’s dinners were about to escape him.
“Well,” he said, “the honors are all the other way about, but—the fact is—a previous engagement—I—I have promised a rousing hot din—I have accepted an invitation to dine with the beef-eaters, at the Crow and Arrow.”
The ship-builder knew all about those “rousing hot dinners” of cold eel-pie, potatoes and mustard, for which the Crow and Arrow tavern was not exactly famous. He looked at Adam, to whom as their sachem the beef-eaters appealed with their eyes, like two faithful animals. Adam was regarding the pair silently, a faint smile of cheer and camaraderie on his face.
“But—but my invitation included our friends,” Phipps hastened to say. “Come, come, the tavern can wait till to-morrow. Gentlemen, you will certainly not disappoint me.”
“’Tis well spoken that the tavern can wait,” said Pike.
“To disappoint the friend of the Sachem would be a grievous thing,” said Halberd. “Let the galled tavern sweat with impatience.”
They would all have started away together at once, had not Phipps noted the heap of baggage, left untidily upon his landing when the travelers arrived.
“Well,” said he, “Adam, you know the way to the house, suppose you and your friends carry your worldly goods to the tavern, engage your apartments, and then follow me on. I, in the meantime, can hasten home to apprise the wife that you are coming, with the beef-eaters, and she can therefore make due preparations in honor of the event.”