All looked up indifferently as we entered and saluted them.
"Ah, gentlemen," says Nick, "this is a glorious April day, is it not?"
"It's well enough," said a surly man in horn spectacles, "but I should be vastly obliged, sir, if you would shut the door, which you have left swinging in the wind."
"Sir," says Nick, "I fear you are no friend to God's free winds. Free winds, free sunshine, free speech, these suit my fancy. Freedom, sir, in her every phase—and Liberty—the glorious jade! Ah, gentlemen, there's a sweetheart you can never tire of. Take my advice and woo her, and you'll never again complain of a breeze on your shins!"
"If you are so ardent, sir," retorted another man in a sneering voice, "why do you not go courting your jade in Massachusetts Bay?"
"Because, sir," said I, "our sweetheart, Mistress Liberty, is already on her joyous way to Johnstown. It is a rendezvous, gentlemen. Will it please you to join us in receiving her?"
One man got up, overturning the draught board, paid his reckoning, and went out muttering and gesticulating.
"A married man," quoth Nick, "and wedded to that old hag, Tyranny. It irks him to hear of fresh young jades, knowing only too well what old sour-face awaits him at home with the bald end of a broom."
The dark looks cast at us signalled storms; but none came, so poor the spirit of the company.
"Gentlemen, you seem melancholy and distrait," said I. "Are you so pensive because my Lord Dunmore has burned our pleasant city of Norfolk? Is it that which weighs upon your minds? Or is the sad plight of Tommy Gage distressing you? Or the several pickles in which Sir Guy Carleton, General Burgoyne, and General Howe find themselves?"