“I promise you it was the best wine in the house.”

“That’s cause fellows don’t go there for wine. Corn likker is more what they specialize in.”

“I would rather regurgitate than let the corn alcohol make me blind,” said Honoré. “Those seem to have been the two choices.”

“It was the only saloon open on the waterfront.”

“The only one that hadn’t already thrown us out, you mean.”

“Are you getting fussy now? I thought you liked adventure.”

“I do. But I believe I have now gathered all the material I need about the lowest dregs of American society.”

“Then go home, you frog-eating stump-licker.”

“Stump-licker?” asked Honoré.

“What about it?”

“You are very, very drunk.”

“At least my coat isn’t on fire.”

Honoré slowly looked down at his coattail, which was indeed smoldering at the edge of the stove fire. He carefully lifted the fabric for closer inspection. “I don’t think this can be laundered out.”

“Wait till I’m awake,” said Calvin. “I can fix it.” He giggled. “I’m a Maker.”

“If I throw up, will I feel as good as you?”

“I feel like hammered horse pucky,” said Calvin.

“That is exactly the improvement I want.” Honoré retched, but he missed the pan. His vomit sizzled on the stovetop.

“Behold the man of education and refinement,” said Honoré.

“That’s kind of an unattractive smell,” said Calvin.

“I need to go to bed,” said Honoré. “I don’t feel well.”

They made it to the bushes along the garden wall before they realized that they weren’t heading for the house. Giggling, they collapsed under the greenery and in moments they were both asleep.

The sun was shining brightly and Calvin was a mass of sweat when he finally came to. He could feel bugs crawling on him and his first impulse was to leap to his feet and brush them off. But his body did not respond at all. He just lay there. He couldn’t even open his eyes.

A faint breeze stirred the air. The bugs moved again on his face. Oh. Not bugs at all. Leaves. He was lying in shrubbery.

“Sometimes I just wish we could build a wall around the Crown Colonies and keep all those meddlesome foreigners out.”

A woman’s voice. Footsteps on the brick sidewalk.

“Did you hear that the Queen is going to grant an audience to that busybody bluestocking abolitionist schoolteacher?”

“No, that’s too much to believe.”

“I agree but with Lady Ashworth as her sponsor—”

“Lady Ashworth!”

The ladies stopped their ambulation only a few steps away from where Calvin lay.

“To think that Lady Ashworth won’t even invite you to her soirees—”

“I beg your pardon, but I have declined her invitations.”

“And yet she’ll present this Peggy person—”

“I thought her name was Margaret—”

“But her people call her Peggy, as if she were a horse.”

“And where is her husband? If she has one.”

“Oh, she has one. Tried and acquitted of slave-stealing, but we all know a slaveholder can’t get justice in those abolitionist courts.”