It was late in the afternoon when the secretary to the President looked up from the crowded desk. "Mr. Jefferson," ventured he, "you will pardon me----"
"Yes, my son?"
"It grows late. You know that today the British minister, Mr. Merry, comes to meet the President for the first time formally--at dinner. Señor Yrujo also--and their ladies, of course. Mr. Burr and Mr. Merry seem already acquainted. I met them riding this morning."
"Hand and glove, then, so soon? What do you make of it? I have a guess that those three--Burr, Merry, Yrujo--mean this administration no special good. And yet it was I myself who kept our Spanish friend from getting his passports back to Madrid. I did that only because of his marriage to the daughter of my friend, Governor McKean, of Pennsylvania. But what were you saying now?"
"I thought perhaps I should go to my rooms to change for dinner. You see that I am still in riding-clothes."
"And what of that, my son? I am in something worse!"
The young man stood and looked at his chief for a moment. He realized the scarce dignified figure that the President presented in his long coat, his soiled waistcoat, his stained trousers, and his woolen stockings--not to mention the unspeakable slippers, down at the heel, into which he had thrust his feet that morning when he came into the office.
"You think I will not do?" Mr. Jefferson smiled at him frankly. "I am not so free from wisdom, perhaps, after all. Let this British minister see us as we are, for men and women, and not dummies for finery. Moreover, I remember well enough how we cooled our heels there in London, Mr. Madison and myself. They showed us little courtesy enough. Well, they shall have no complaint here. We will treat them as well as we do the others, as well as the electors who sent us here!"
Meriwether Lewis allowed himself a smile.
"Go," added his chief. "Garb yourself as I would have you--in your best. But there will be no precedence at table this evening--remember that! Let them take seats pell-mell--the devil take the hindmost--a fair field for every one, and favor to none! Seat them as nearly as possible as they should not be seated--and leave the rest to me. All these--indeed, all history and all the records--shall take me precisely as I am!"
An hour later Meriwether Lewis stood before his narrow mirror, well and handsomely clad, as was seeming with one of his family and his place--a tall and superb figure of young manhood, as proper a man as ever stood in buckled shoes in any country of the world.