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Slowly, slowly the buff funnel again came into view, and then as the tug still climbed he saw it all a white, broad-waisted yacht cluttering in the grip of the waters, throwing her stern toward heaven, reeling over, taking water on one rail, letting it through the opposite scuppers, sticking her bow into the waves and rising, shaking off the water like a fat spaniel.
Around and behind him were people in plain civic dresses and two or three war-worn veterans evidently officers of rank arrayed in a uniform of blue and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened its roots about her heart, beheld only the principal personage, and never doubted that this was the long-looked-for governor to whom she was to surrender up her charge.
But he did not look in bowing trim, his face, buff waistcoat, and shirt, presenting a currant-dumpling appearance rather ludicrous to gaze upon, for they were specked and spotted all over; while his white duck trousers, far above his knees, were dyed of a pitchy black hue, and covered with abominably smelling black mud. "Now, sir," said Mr Jones; "pray, sir, what have you to say to this, sir?"
One act of his alone stands out for us with significance at this critical time. In this second Congress he appeared habitually on the floor in his blue and buff uniform of a Virginia colonel. It was his way of saying that the hour for action had come, and that he at least was ready for the fight whenever called upon. Presently he was summoned.
"Saving your presence, I'll strip to the buff." "The buff! What is that? Oh, thank you, sir," this was in reply to young Mr. Wright "The naked body! why, buff! 'Buff, the abstract word, the actual stuff, the very wesen of man unclothed. 'Buffer, the concrete man, in the 'buff, in the flesh; it is sehr intéressant."
The buff jerkin, broad belt, and long sword of one, showed him to be a Low Country soldier, whose look of scowling importance, and drunken impudence, were designed to sustain his title to call himself a Roving Blade. It seemed to Nigel that he had seen this fellow somewhere or other.
The belching of the guns sounded nearer than on the Monday, but that was small consolation, for it had sounded near and afar off alternately for many days. There is a modernised game of blind man's buff in which the blind one is set to find a hidden ping-pong ball, and is aided in the search by a fugue played on the piano.
At the top of the field an old man, whose broad back and severe face were like those of the old peasant of Holbein, but whose clothes told no tale of poverty, was gravely driving his plough of an antique shape, drawn by two tranquil oxen, with coats of a pale buff, real patriarchs of the fallow, tall of make, somewhat thin, with long and backward-sloping horns, the kind of old workmen who by habit have got to be brothers to one another, as throughout our country-side they are called, and who, if one loses the other, refuse to work with a new comrade, and fret themselves to death.
"Now, at last," said Grandfather, "after weary years of war, the regiments of Massachusetts returned in peace to their families. Now, the stately and dignified leaders, such as General Lincoln and General Knox, with their pondered hair and their uniforms of blue and buff, were seen moving about the streets."
He took the lead in the children's sports of blind man's buff, hunt the slipper, etc., or in their games at cards, and was the most noisy of the party, affecting to cheat and to be excessively eager to win; while with children of smaller size he would turn the hind part of his wig before, and play all kinds of tricks to amuse them.
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