"You had better mouse round the market awhile before trading. John Hancock bought my last load. His store is close by Faneuil Hall. He is rich, inherited his property from his uncle. He lives in style in a stone house on Beacon Hill. He is liberal with his money, and is one of the few rich men in Boston who take sides with the people against the aggressions of King George and his ministers. Mr. Adams begins to be gray, but Warren and Hancock are both young men. They are doing grand things in maintaining the rights of the Colonies. I want you to make their acquaintance. By seeing and talking with such men you will be worth more to yourself and everybody else. Your going to market and meeting such gentlemen will be as good as several months of school. You'll see more people than you ever saw on the muster-field; ships from foreign lands will be moored in the harbor. You'll see houses by the thousand, meetinghouses with tall steeples, and will hear the bells ring at five o'clock in the morning, getting-up time, at noon for dinner, and at nine in the evening, bed-time. Two regiments of redcoats are there. The latest news is that they are getting sassy. I can believe it. At Ticonderoga and Crown Point they used to put on airs, and call the Provincials "string-beans," "polly-pods," "slam bangs." They turned up their noses at our buckskin breeches, but when it came to fighting we showed 'em what stuff we were made of. Don't let 'em pick a quarrel, but don't take any sass from 'em. Do right by everybody."
"I will try to do right," Robert replied.
The sun was rising the next morning when Robert gathered up the reins and stood ready to step into the wagon which had been loaded for the market.
"You have three dozen new milk cheeses," said Rachel, "and two and one half dozen of four meal. I have marked the four meals with a cross in the centre, so you'll know them from the new milk. There are sixteen greened with sage. They look real pretty. I have put in half a dozen skims; somebody may want 'em for toasting."
"You will find," said Mrs. Walden, "a web of linsey-woolsey in your trunk with your best clothes, and a dozen skeins of wool yarn. It is lamb's wool. I've doubled and twisted it, and I don't believe the women will find in all Boston anything softer or nicer for stockings."