“Shafe!” a woman cried. Her speech was slurred, as if from liquor, and I knew it was the tropical bird. “Shafe! You know nothing about it, Mel! Tisn’t a wilderness: it’s like a regatta on the Thames! I shaw it all on the map. Jack showed it to me. After you leave Quebec, you come to lakes, beautiful lakes, and then to Hush’n River; and before you know it, you’re in New York. Ain’t you, my lord?”

I looked at Nathaniel, to make sure he heard. “Listen to that!” I said. “Just a pleasure jaunt from Quebec to New York!”

An arrogant voice cut in: that of the man who had been called “my lord,” and certainly, therefore, the voice of Germain. “She’s quite right, Mevil. If she wants to join Burgoyne, I’ll be the first to say yes. The rebels won’t bother her! They’ll run like sheep when they see the regulars. You heard what Jack said about them: they’re beggars—rabble! Officered by shoemakers: butchers: barbers!”

Incredulous laughter greeted his words.

“ ’Pon my soul, it’s true!” Germain went on. “Not one of their officers, not even the best of ’em, but could be bought for a dollar a day! Peg’ll be as safe over there—safer—than she’d be strolling in Hyde Park. Don’t let me hear any further talk about its not being safe!”

Nathaniel eyed me drolly. “I don’t believe it!” he declared. “Officers from our section, they wouldn’t sell out for less than a dollar and a half a day!”

I looked at him. “That doesn’t strike me as funny. I can tell you something much more amusing.”

“Indeed!” Nathaniel said in his most indulgent Harvard manner.

“Yes, indeed! The gentleman you just heard—the gentleman who has charge of the war against our people—the gentleman who thinks we’ll run like sheep and can all be bought—fifteen years ago there wasn’t a man in England who didn’t consider him a coward and a traitor! He was court-martialed for disobeying orders at the Battle of Minden, and was adjudged unfit to serve the King in any military capacity whatever. So now they let him make war against America!”

“Oh well,” Nathaniel said lightly, “it goes to prove the English know how to take a joke, after all.”

We were silent, the four of us. Not only was I angry at Germain, but I was worried by Nathaniel, with his apparent liking for the English—worried by the thought that some day his careless words might be misinterpreted, and bring trouble on him and others.