"Then you are an uncivil youth to wear such a glum face. Come, tell me it all. Is it that Stephen Hopkins hath flogged you?"
"No!" Miles answered, with an angry sniff. "A beating more or less, 'tis nothing to a man."
Priscilla suddenly put an arm about his neck. "My poor little—man!" she said, and, for all she laughed, her voice was tender. "I know I am but a silly woman, yet mayhap I can help you,—an you let me. Is it that the Elder rated you grievously?"
Miles shook his head, then, spite of himself, blurted out: "'Tis—Captain Standish is angry and scarce will look at me. And he has ever been kind to me. But now he will have none of me. I had no mind to be so wicked; I did not mean what I said; I'm sorry."
"Why, you need not lay it to heart if the Captain has been round with you," the girl coaxed. "He must be so troubled now with all this ill news of the savages."
"But he—he thinks I'm not sorry," Miles faltered, twisting the ends of the window curtain relentlessly between his hands. "And I am, but I can't go to him and say it, when he is angered."
"But I can go to him and tell him you are sorry, if 'twill comfort you," Priscilla answered coolly. "I have no fear of your Captain."
"Will you so?" Miles cried gratefully. "Sure, you're uncommon good. When I'm older I'll marry you,—unless Jack Alden does it ere then."
Whereat Mistress Mullins's face flushed pink, and she pulled Miles's ears, and, calling him a scamp, packed him into the bedroom to speak with Dolly.
So, when Miles ran home to supper, he was in an almost cheerful mood, which speedily ended, for Master Hopkins made him read a sorrowful chapter on the wrath of God against transgressors, and cuffed him because he could not pronounce the word "Zarhites." Mistress Hopkins scolded too, because she had labored all the afternoon to mend the shirt which Miles had worn upon his wanderings; moreover, she would have to make the troublesome boy a new doublet, to replace the one he had lost, and new breeches, for those he now wore were disgracefully ragged, so perhaps she had reason to be vexed on his account.