“Nay, I care not to please the king—but the assembled queens!” He doffed his hat, and bowed with courtly grace to the group of young women in the centre of the room.
Full of laughter and chaffing they crowded about him—his sister Betty, her friend Patience Ruffin, Mistress Dorothy Graham, who had come in to learn a new knitting stitch of Betty, and pretty Janet Cameron, who had followed Dorothy to hear the gossip which must necessarily flow freely where so many women were assembled. Immediately they surrounded the young soldier, and there was much laughter and talking as they relieved him of his sword and gun.
“Only a private in the ranks, and yet here am I attended like a commander-in-chief,” he said, laughing. “Methinks no hero of olden romance had ever such charming squirage. Are you going to give me your gloves and fasten your colours on my helmet, that I may go forth to battle as did the knights of yore?”
“Yes; kill me a Redcoat for this,” and Janet tossed him her glove, while Dorothy tied a strand of the bright wool from her knitting ball upon his sleeve. “An you win not a battle for each of us, you are no knight of ours.”
But the fifth girl of the group, after one glance at him upon his entrance, had turned abruptly to the window and stood gazing into the street, tapping the air to “King George, Our Royal Ruler” upon the panes. No part of her face was visible, but her attitude was spirited, and the poise of her head bespoke defiance. Richard Clevering’s eyes travelled every few minutes to that straight, lithe figure, and anon he called out banteringly:—
“Hey, you, there at the window, are King George and his army passing by that you have no eyes for other folk?”
“I would that they were,” was the short answer, and the fingers went on with their strumming.
“Come, Joscelyn, leave off sulking and see how brave Richard’s uniform doth make him,” said Betty, coaxingly, eager that her brother’s unspoken wish should be gratified.
“And truly doth he need somewhat to make him brave, seeing he is in arms against his king,” Joscelyn retorted, but turned not her head.
“In arms against the king? Aye, truly am I; and yours be not the only Royalist back I shall see ’twixt this and the end of the campaign, Mistress Joscelyn Cheshire.”