"They won't let any but the great folk have a hand therein; daddy said 'twould be so," commented Francis.
"True enough," scoffed Lister; "the Governor, and Captain Standish, Master Bradford, Master Winslow, Master Hopkins, and—the worshipful Master Edward Dotey."
"Aha!" jeered Francis. "They're taking old Hopkins's other man Dotey along, and Ned Lister is jealous of him."
"Hold your tongue!" cried Lister, catching the lad by the scruff of the neck, "else I'll heave you over the bulwark."
Francis twisted up his face and opened his mouth in a prodigious, dry-eyed howl, which would have set Miles laughing, had he not been intent just then upon the approaching boat. He could see her visibly growing larger, as she bounded nearer and nearer over the swell of the water, and each moment he recalled more distinctly in what terms his father had forbidden him have to do with "that Satanish brood of the Billingtons." Miles shuffled one foot uneasily; perhaps he really ought to go into the cabin now and see how his sick friend, Jack Cooke, was faring.
He turned away and had idled a few paces along the deck, when Francis, who had been suffered wrest out of Lister's hold, called after him: "Ah, Miles daren't let his father find him with me. I knew so."
"It's not so, neither," Miles flung back, and made a great show of stopping by the mainmast, where he stood gazing down the open hatchway which led to those cabins that were in the depth of the hold. "Aren't you coming with me, Francis?" he asked presently.
The other, quite undeceived, came snickering up to him: "Have no fear; I'll take myself off ere your father come. Sure, you're a stout-hearted one, Miles."
"You're a pretty fellow to talk of courage," Miles was goaded into replying, "after the way you howled out but now. You might have known Ned Lister'd do you no hurt."
"No doubt you'd not have been afraid," his tormentor scoffed. "You're not afraid of anybody save your father."