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As the latter belonged to the Addisonian circle, the opinion at Button's turned in favour of his version, especially as Addison himself thought Tickell had more of Homer than Pope. This ended Pope's patronage of Button's, and, indeed, it was not long ere the glory it had known began to wane.
Emmeline, sitting up in the old pilot coat, nodded in reply without speaking. Another child might have supplemented Dick's enquiries as to her uncle by questions of her own, but she did not. Did she guess that there was some subterfuge in Mr Button's answer, and that things were different from what he was making them out to be? Who can tell?
He seemed to be no longer on an equality with her. He was diffident, he was respectful. If this girl was a friend of Mr. Gay the distinguished poet and dramatist whose latest work, "The Fables," was being talked about at Button's, at Wills', at every coffee-house where the wits gathered, she must be somebody in the world of fashion and letters. Perhaps she was an actress.
Bathing in the pouring wet is a chilly sport, and his midday meal of cold potatoes had not been invigorating. These he had grabbed, and, having done them up hastily in newspaper, had bolted with them out of the house. He had been fined heavily for slackness during the week, and Mr. Button's inevitable wrath at docked wages he desired to undergo as late as possible.
Yet who can tell what a day may bring forth? Sumter came in, cheery and laughing, for the late family breakfast. Guard-mounting was long over, but he had been detained by the colonel. "It is almost comical," said he, "to see Button's delight in those letters in the New York papers. He's as curious now to know the author of those as he was furious at the supposed author of the others."
He would steal down the back stairs and return to the nursery with a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica, over which he would pore through an afternoon, while his cotton cows and his Noah's ark were left neglected on the floor. Against such a stubbornness Mr. Button's efforts were of little avail. The sensation created in Baltimore was, at first, prodigious.
"Why," said Button, to Scott, "this sending one field officer of cavalry to sit in judgment on the official deeds of another is nothing short of of infamous, and I'm amazed at Crook's doing it." "It ain't Crook," said Scott, not without a little malicious delight in Button's disgust.
Sterling, straightforward men like Major Stannard, like Sumter, Raymond, and Truscott, of his captains men who could not fawn and would not flatter were never Button's intimates. He admired them; he respected them; but down in his heart he did not like them, because they were, in a word, independent.
Tell me," he adds contemptuously, "is genius honoured among you?" "Faith, it is honoured, your Reverence," said my grandfather, "but never encouraged." This answer so pleased the Dean that he bade Mr. Carvel dine with him next day at Button's Coffee House, where they drank mulled wine and old sack, for which young Mr. Carvel paid.
And then there is this naïve postscript: "The young poets are in the back room, and take their places as you directed." Nor did that end the plot. A few days later Steele found another occasion to mention Button's.
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