“Say appreciation, rather,” corrected Randolph. “I have had a hearty laugh over that dance. I wish I had been there to see it; such merriment is so rare in Massachusetts.”
“Nearly as rare as introductions between gentlemen,” Adam answered.
He tipped up his mug and drank the last of his brew carelessly. Randolph turned red with anger. His gray eyes looked like cold fire, yet he was still unwilling to accept defeat in his effort to find out the bent of Adam’s political views.
“We live in a time when the stoutest friends and companions in good causes might be lost to each other by formality,” he said, with a smile doing its best to bend his features. “I must beg your pardon, if I seem——”
He was interrupted by the entrance, at this moment, of William Phipps, who came in at the door which the landlord had quietly unbolted.
“What, Adam, not yet done with eating?” he called out, bluntly. “Come, come, I have been waiting this long time for you and your friends to have a look over the brig.”
“With you at once,” rejoined the rover.
He and the beef-eaters knocked over their heavy chairs and stools, as they arose from the table. Phipps looked at Randolph. The two men nodded, distantly and somewhat frowningly. Without so much as glancing at Randolph, Adam and his retinue walked to the door and so away, with the Captain.
Randolph needed no further intimation of Adam’s probable leanings, politically, than this obvious camaraderie with Phipps—who was a patriot as immovable and staunch as a rock fortress. He clenched his fists and ground his molars savagely.
“Curse the young fool!” he said. “I’ll make him wish for a civil tongue to be hung in his head!”