"I'll fetch you the water, and gladly, mistress," Miles answered, so eagerly that he stammered. He stepped into the cabin to take the jug from where it rested on a chest beneath the port-hole, and Dolly, following shyly after, hesitated on the threshold.
"Is this little maid your sister?" Mistress Standish roused up to ask. "Won't you come in and bear me company, sweetheart, while Miles fetches the water?"
Dolly plaited a fold of her apron between her fingers and nodded dumbly.
"That's well," said Mistress Standish. "Sit you down here on the chest by me. And I've some raisins of the sun you shall have if you'll stay."
"Dolly must not eat your raisins if you be sick." Miles formulated the relentless principle which had been enforced as regards himself when Dolly lay ill. "And I'll fetch the water speedily." He stood a moment on the threshold, balancing the jug in one hand. "Mistress Standish," he blurted out, with sudden resolution, "would you not rather have beer than water?"
"Than the water from the ship's casks, yes," she answered; "but 'twill relish well enough, Miles. At even, when Captain Standish comes, mayhap he'll get me a draught of beer."
"I'll get it for you now," Miles said cheerily, and walked away, with his head up and the jug swinging.
Outside the door of the great cabin the chilly rain, that stung finely on his cheeks, pricked him alive to realization of what he had undertaken. Since Christmas, when the supply of the Pilgrim emigrants had given out, beer could be obtained on board the Mayflower only from the ship's stores, through the courtesy of Master Jones, the captain; and he was a terrible person. Most times he ranged about the high quarter-deck, where only the chiefs of the Pilgrims dared go; once Francis Billington, to show his daring, had clambered thither, and Master Jones, without parley, had bidden his quartermaster, "Kick that young imp down into Limbo, where he belongs." From that experience Francis had been black and blue, and subdued in manner for a week.
So it was no wonder now that, for long minutes, Miles stood shivering in the rain at the foot of the companion ladder, while he tried to summon courage to venture up. He might never have arrived at such hardihood, had not Jones himself, strolling forth upon the quarter-deck to study the weather, observed him, and presently bellowed lustily: "What beest thou staring up hither for, hey?"
"I—I want to come up, if it like you, sir," Miles piped quaveringly.