The King faction had looked upon us blackly, though there were too many of us to make it safe meddling, and none of us were minded to break bread with them.

Instead, we sat around on the counter and on boxes in the store, and ate crackers and sardines and things like that.

I couldn't help remembering my last Fourth, and the banquet I had given on board the _Molly Stark_--my yacht, named after the lady known to history, whom dad claims for an ancestress--and I laughed out loud.

The boys wanted to know the cause of my mirth, and so, with a sardine laid out decently between two crackers in one hand, and a blue "granite" cup of plebeian beer in the other, I told them all about that banquet, and some of the things we had to eat and drink--whereat they laughed, too.

The contrast was certainly amusing.