There something in Francis's face made Miles glance over his shoulder, and right behind him, his step deadened by the sand, stood the Captain, who was gazing down at him with a look between contemptuous and amused, that made the other lads slip away, and set Miles scuttling into his shirt.
"Well, sir, you show a deep and edifying sense of the mischief you have done," Standish said quietly, but the very absence of anger from his tone made Miles's face burn the hotter.
He was glad that his shirt was over his head at that moment, so he could not see the speaker's look, and he dreaded to meet it. But when he had drawn on the garment and could glance round him, he saw, with an added pang of humiliation, that Captain Standish, not holding him worthy of further notice, had trudged on to the landing.
For a moment Miles stood gazing blankly after him; then he turned and, kicking up the sand in half-hearted little spurts, plodded on up the hill to Master Brewster's gate. Beneath the bluff, on the shore of the brook, he came upon the Elder, laboring diligently among his green things, and told him in a listless tone why he had come thither. Master Brewster talked to him a long time and wisely, Miles had no doubt, but he only heard the words vaguely, for he was feeling the piteous smart of his irritated shoulders, and watching the flecks of light through the green bushes that shifted across the Elder's doublet, and harking to the loud purr of the fat cat Solomon, who was rubbing himself against the Elder's knees.
Yet he was dully sorry when the Elder dismissed him, for that left him free for some heavy thoughts. It would be a little comfort to speak with Dolly; so, rather uncertain what welcome such a rapscallion as he might hope for, he toiled up the bluff and faltered into the Brewsters' living room.
The wind from the sea stirred the curtain at the window, and in the full blast, industriously sewing at a small gown, Mistress Mullins sat alone. "So you've come to visit me, little Indian?" she greeted Miles, and put her hands to her brown hair that had ruffled in the draught. "My scalp is quite safe? You are well assured you have no tomahawk about you?"
Miles shook his head in crestfallen fashion; he only wanted to see Dolly, he murmured.
"She is in bed, poor little one! till I make her some tidy clothes to put on," Priscilla answered. "Stay and talk with me, Miles, like a gallant lad. Come, if you'll look merry again, I'll show you something rare. 'Tis a humbird."
She led him to the western casement, where on the window-sill rested a little cage of paper, in which fluttered a shimmery atom no bigger than a bee. For a moment, because Priscilla expected it of him, Miles gazed at the tiny whirring wings, and touched the cage gently, but in so listless a fashion that the young girl asked abruptly: "What has gone wrong with you, Miles?"
"Naught."