Soldier Rigdale: How He Sailed in the Mayflower and How He Served Miles Standish

by Beulah Marie Dix

Constance Hopkins was Giles's sister, a slip of a lass, not three years older than Miles, but to him she seemed quite grown up. Certainly she bore the responsibilities of age in those days, for not only must she nurse her stepmother, Mistress Elizabeth Hopkins, who lay helpless in her cabin, but she must care for the baby, Oceanus, born on the voyage across the sea, and the little half-sister, Damaris, a baby also, not two years old. Yet somehow motherly little Constance found time to comfort Dolly, and cook a bit of meat for hungry Miles, and assure them both that their father and mother surely would come soon to look to them.

Dolly hugged the "big girl," but Miles could scarcely do that, and he knew no civil speech to tell his gratitude, so he was glad when, his eyes falling on Damaris, he thought to pick her up. "I'll mind her for you a bit, Constance," he offered.

Damaris was pleased with Miles's tousled hair and sturdy arms, that held her more firmly than her half-sister could; and Miles, never guessing what a source of misfortune her liking would prove to him hereafter, was much elated at his success with her. He tugged baby out on deck to show her the gulls looking for food in the water, and the bright crusted snow that sparkled in the sunshine on the wooded point. Damaris gurgled appreciatively and pulled Miles's hair; then, when he carried her back into the cabin, slept like a kitten, whereat Constance was so relieved and pleased that Miles gladly cared for the baby, his baby, the next day, and the next.

"Dolly plaited a fold of her apron between her fingers."

But the third day, a Friday, a pelting fine rain set in that made an airing on the deck out of the question, not for the baby alone, but for a well-grown boy and girl. Miles and Dolly went up to spend the afternoon in the great cabin, because in their own quarters there was no one to talk to, and, moreover, it was cold. In the main cabin they would find some one to keep them company, and they could, at least, warm their hands at the little fire burning in a tubful of sand, which Constance often used in heating food for Mistress Hopkins.

But this afternoon the fire was out and Constance busied with her mother, so the two children, disappointed, sat down together on a rude bench, at the angle in the stern where two rows of little cabins joined. "I wish I were with my mother," sniffed Dolly; and "'Twill do you no good to cry," Miles checked her sternly.

"I was not crying, Miles Rigdale," the damsel answered hotly.

It was on Miles's lips to reply, when close at hand a voice spoke his name, "Miles Rigdale!"

Readily enough he jumped up and went to the half-opened door of the adjoining cabin. It was Captain Standish's cabin, he remembered now, and, as he halted in the doorway, he perceived Mistress Rose Standish lying in the bunk. A little of the afternoon light sifted in through the tiny port-hole, and by it he noted how her hair fell loosely about her face, unlike the way she wore it when on deck; but her cheeks were rosy as ever, and her voice quite steady as she spoke: "It's you, the lad my husband told me of? I thought I heard one call you by name. Will you not do somewhat for me, Miles? Fetch me my jug here full of water again. Goodwife Tinker was to look to me to-day; I felt very well this morning. But she's ill now herself, and when I tried to rise,—" she laughed, with a nervous catch in her laughter,—"why, then things went whisking round me very strangely. But you look as you still could stand stoutly, sir."