"Yes, I would, John Pigeon," snapped Doctor Jim, "or of any one else who did not show his gentility by his deeds. And so would you, if you were not a bit tarred with the same dirty brush as Mr. Washington."
"Don't you think," ventured Robert, with diffidence, "that our grievance—for, of course, there is a grievance, Doctor Jim—is against the English Parliament? What is Parliament to us, that we should bow down to it, when we have always had parliaments of our own? What's sacred in Parliament? But the king,—that's a question of loyalty. What's a gentleman without loyalty? Surely the gentry must stand or fall with the king! Surely—"
"What nonsense, Robert!" interrupted Barbara, severely scornful, indignant at him for his views, but grateful to him for the opportunity to express her own with point. "Who was it that whipped King John into submission, and made him sign Magna Charta? Was it the riffraff or the gentry, I'd like to know? Where there is a real aristocracy, Robert, there is no need of kings!"
"Barbara, dear!" cried Mistress Mehitable, appalled at this sweeping heterodoxy. But the others laughed, with varying degrees of sympathy or dissent. Doctor Jim wagged his head.
"That's right, Robert, my boy," said he, sympathetically. "You draw her fire, and let me skirmish around. That's the kind of thing I get continually!"
"Is it true," inquired Doctor John, "that that clear and capacious intellect, James Otis, is permanently clouded since the wound he got in the affair with the king's officers?"
"''Tis true, 'tis pity; and pity 'tis, 'tis true!'" quoted Glenowen. "A fine brain wasted in a smuggler's brawl. I take it there's no wisdom to waste, among either Tories or Whigs, these days,—for these days are big with Fate!"
"Uncle Bob!" said Barbara, fixing him with a wide, level look, "what are you, Whig or Tory? You seem so careful!"
Glenowen laughed.
"You insist on pinning me down to it, do you, saucy hussy? Well, I wish I knew! I think there are some hundred thousand or more of honest men in these colonies who are trying to find out which they really are, right to the bone. But I can tell you in part. For one thing, I am an Englishman, just as much an Englishman here as if I lived in England! Do you know what that means?"