"But I did not tear them wantonly," Miles lamented to Ned Lister next morning. "Yet she says she is so busied she cannot make me new clothes for days, and I must wear my breeches all ragged for punishment."
"Hm!" answered Ned. "Half Plymouth seems to take its diversion in punishing the other half." He was on his knees between two rows of the rustling green cornstalks, where he was grubbing up those weeds that were so tough as to resist his hoe; his doublet was off, but he had so scrupulously turned up the collar of his shirt that no trace of the red mark about his neck could be seen.
It was so unusual for Ned to work that Miles was lingering to watch him, when suddenly the young man broke out: "Look you here, Miley, you were with me that day I made Dotey to fight me, and you heard all I said unto him, so I ought to tell you—'twas not he bore tales of me unto Hopkins; 'twas the mistress herself."
Miles nodded his head. "I never had any liking for her," he said softly.
Ned weeded scowlingly. "Well, she made Hopkins go unto the Governor and beg that Ed Dotey and I be released after we'd been tied an hour," he admitted, in a grudging tone. "She might be worse, and so might Ed Dotey; he's no talebearer, though he is a self-sufficient coxcomb."
For several days this was the only bit of private talk which Miles had with Ned, for Master Hopkins, who said that Lister had already corrupted the boy sufficiently, took now a new course of keeping the two rigorously apart. While Ned was sent to work in the fields, Miles was bidden weed in the house-garden, or fetch and carry for Mistress Hopkins.
Master Hopkins believed, too, that Satan found mischief for idle hands, so he saw to it that one task followed another, till Miles, honestly wearied, looked back with fondness to his life among the Indians as a time of perpetual holiday. One morning, indeed, about a week after his return to Plymouth, when he was forbidden to help Ned dig clams, and ordered, instead, to fetch water and then weed in the garden, he voiced his rebellious wish: "I would I were back with those good, friendly Indians at Manomet."
Master Hopkins, who was busy at the delicate task of repairing the lock of his musket, looked up at the muttered words. "You wish to dwell among those shameless idolaters?" he questioned grimly. "Verily, Miles Rigdale, you are a son of perdition."
A very terrible name that was, Miles thought, but it was worse than the hard name, that Master Hopkins cuffed him till his ears tingled and his eyes watered.
Frightened at his own wickedness, and smarting with the blows, he hurried off to the spring, and, halfway thither, met with Francis Billington. Even Francis's sympathy would have been welcome just then, and, after all he had undergone because of his confession to save the boy, Miles thought he had some claim to it. But Francis stiffened up at his greeting and put on a surprising new air of virtue. "I'm forbid to have to do with you, Miles," he announced, with open delight. "Sure, I see not why your father ever need keep you so tenderly from my conversation. Why, you are yourself the worst lad in all the colony; 'twas Captain Standish himself said so to my father."