"Thee is crazed of many colors," said Wholesome laughing—"a bull of but one."
Schmidt stopped short in the crowd, to Wholesome's disgust. "What," said he, quite forgetful of the crowd, "is more cordial than color? This he recalleth was a woman black as night, with a red turban and a lapful of magnolias, and to one side red crabs in a basket, and to one side a tubful of lilies. Moss all about, I remember."
"Come along," said Wholesome. "The man is cracked, and in sunny weather the crack widens."
And so we went away down street to our several tasks, chatting and amused.
Those were most happy days for me, and I found at evening one of my greatest pleasures when Schmidt called for me after our early tea and we would stroll together down to the Delaware, where the great India ships lay at wharves covered with casks of madeira and boxes of tea and spices. Then we would put out in his little rowboat and pull away toward Jersey, and, after a plunge in the river at Cooper's Point, would lazily row back again while the spire of Christ Church grew dim against the fading sunset, and the lights would begin to show here and there in the long line of sombre houses. By this time we had grown to be sure friends, and a little help from me at a moment when I chanced to guess that he wanted money had made the bond yet stronger. So it came that he talked to me, though I was but a lad, with a curious freedom, which very soon opened to me a full knowledge of those with whom I lived.
One evening, when we had been drifting silently with the tide, he suddenly said aloud, "A lion in the fleece of the sheep."
"What?" said I, laughing.
"I was thinking of Wholesome," he replied. "But you do not know him. Yet he has that in his countenance which would betray a more cunning creature."
"How so?" I urged, being eager to know more of the man who wore the garb and tongue of Penn, and could swear roundly when moved.
"If it will amuse," said the German, "I will tell you what it befell me to hear to-day, being come into the parlor when Mistress White and Wholesome were in the garden, of themselves lonely."