Sir John had become a little drunk and slopped his wine-glass, but the wintry smile glimmered on his thin lips as though some secret thought contented him, and he was ever whispering with Captain Watts. But he spoke always of the coming summer and of his cattle and fields and the pursuits of peace, saying that he had no interest in Haldimand nor in any kinsmen who had fled Tryon; and that all he desired was to be let alone at the Hall, and not bothered by Phil Schuyler. "For," says he, emptying his glass with unsteady hand, "I've enough to do to feed my family and my servants and collect my rents; and I'm damned if I can do it unless those excitable gentlemen in Albany mind their own business as diligently as I wish to mind mine." "Surely, Sir John," said I, "nobody wishes to annoy you, because it is the universal desire that you remain. And, as you have pledged your honour to do so, only a fool would attempt to make more difficult your position among us." "Oh, there are fools, too," said he in his slow voice. "There were fools who supposed that the Six Nations would not resent ill treatment meted out to Guy Johnson." His cold gaze rested for a second upon Hiakatoo, then swept elsewhere. Preoccupied, I heard Claudia's voice in my ear: "Do you take no pleasure any longer in looking at me, Jack! You have paid me very scant notice tonight." I turned, smilingly made her a compliment, and she was now gazing into the little looking-glass set in the handle of her French fan, and her dimpled hand busy with her hair. "Polly's Irish maid dressed my hair," she remarked. "I would to God I had as clever a wench. Could you discover one to wait on me?" Hare, who had no warrant for familiarity, as far as I was concerned, nevertheless called out with a laugh that I knew every wench in the countryside and should find a pretty one very easily to serve Claudia. Which pleasantry did not please me; but Ensign Moucher and young Watts bore him out, and they all fell a-laughing, discussing with little decency such wenches as the two Wormwood girls near Fish House, and Betsy and Jessica Browse--maids who were pretty and full of gaiety at dance or frolic, and perhaps a trifle free in manners, but of whom I knew no evil and believed none whatever the malicious gossip concerning them. The gallantries of such men as Sir John and Walter Butler were known to everybody in the country; and so were the carryings on of all the younger gentry and the officers from Johnstown to Albany. Young girls' names--the daughters of tenants, settlers, farmers, were bandied about carelessly enough; and the names of those famed for beauty, or a lively disposition, had become more or less familiar to me.