Mrs. Stoddard said nothing to Anne of the trouble at the spring, and when Anne would have explained her part in it, her friend said quickly: “Captain Enos is not displeased with you, Anne. He thinks the Cary children not well taught at home, and says for you not to play with them,” so that Anne had gone happily back to her playhouse, and told “Martha” that there was no one so good as Mistress and Captain Stoddard, “except my dear father,” the little girl had added loyally.
“Now, Martha, you must be a good and quiet child,” she advised, “for after this you will live in the house with me. You can come out here to play with me, but every night you are to sleep in my bed; and it may be, Mistress Stoddard will let you rest in the kitchen now and then, and you may go with me over the pasture hill to see Brownie.”
The big British ships lay quietly at anchor for several days. The men came ashore in boat-loads, washed their clothes at the spring, bought such provisions as the little settlement could offer, and wandered about the shore. The citizens treated them not uncivilly, for since the men of Province Town were unable to make any resistance to those they felt to be their country’s foes, they knew it to be best to be silent and accept the authority they had not the strength to defy. So the fishing-boats swung at anchor in the harbor, and the men lingered about the landing, or fished for plaice fish and sole from their dories near shore.
“We’ll be poor indeed when frost comes,” complained Mrs. Stoddard; “my molasses keg is near empty now, and the meal barrel not half full. If those Britishers do not soon leave the harbor so that the men can get back to the fishing, this place will know hunger, for our larder is no poorer than our neighbors’.”
“Yes,” agreed Captain Enos, “the whole coast is feeling the king’s displeasure because we will not pay him taxes to fill his pockets, and make slaves of us. I wish we had some news of our Boston friends. The Freemans are well to do, but with Boston beset on all sides with British soldiers they may be hard pressed.”
“’Twill come to worse yet, be sure,” predicted Mrs. Stoddard gloomily.
It was but a few days after this when with joyful songs the British sailors made ready to sail, and on a bright July morning the vessels, taking advantage of a fair wind, bent their sails and skimmed away up the coast.
“They are bound for Boston,” declared Captain Enos, “and ’Tis soon enough they’ll be back again. The Boston folk will not let them come to anchor, I’ll be bound.”
Hardly had the ships got under headway before the fishermen were rowing out to their sailboats, and soon the little fleet was under sail bound off Race Point toward the fishing grounds.
“Now, Anne, you had best go after Brownie and bring her back to her old pasture. I like not the long tramp morning and night to milk the creature,” said Mrs. Stoddard, and she watched Anne, with the wooden doll clasped in her arm, go obediently off on her errand.