Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/256

236 affairs at home in coffee-house and tavern under the King and Queen, nephew and daughter to him who had so lately made good his escape to Paris. They would comment on the new Court at Whitehall, on the unsociable, stern, and forbidding manners of William, on his carelessness in dress, his foreign accent, his want of geniality. "His freezing look, his silence, the dry and concise answers which he uttered, when he could keep silence no longer, disgusted noblemen and gentlemen who had been accustomed to be slapped on the back by their Royal masters, called Jack or Harry, congratulated about race cups or rallied about actresses." All this social freedom was at an end now. If the King appeared at all in public, he stood among the gay crowds of courtiers and ladies, silent and abstracted, rarely smiling, never jesting. Never was he heard to swear, never was he seen at a theatre. Hunting and gambling were his recreations, and it must have been some consolation to our Tory forefathers to learn that the King could lose £4,000 at a single sitting. His wife disliked gossip and scandal as much as he did; when courtiers prattled to her of duels, debts, and elopements, she replied by asking them if