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

by Beulah Marie Dix

"Give them away there, eh? To Mistress Mullins, now, perhaps?"

"No, to be sure," Miles said indignantly. "I do not like Priscilla Mullins."

"Then you are the only one of that mind in New Plymouth. Why do you not like her?"

Miles went in silence a time, kicking at each hump and hummock in his path, but Alden was waiting for his answer, and he wished to please him. "Well, if you must know, John Alden," he broke out at last, "I do not like Priscilla Mullins because she kissed me."

Alden began to laugh, then, suddenly picking Miles up by the back of his doublet, shook him a little. "Miles Rigdale," he said solemnly, as he set the boy, rather breathless, on his feet again, "you are an ungrateful little cub."

Miles held that a most uncalled-for charge, but he had no time to defend himself, for just then they came over the brow of the hill by Cooke's cottage and saw men astir in the street, so the day's labor must be beginning. Miles ran to join Francis and Jack, and, in bragging to his comrades of his flowers, forgot to take them to Dolly. That night, when he stopped to have a word with her, he told her all about them, but he found that she was not interested in a story of six blossoms, seeing that Priscilla Mullins, since the morning, had had a fair large bunch of them, such as no one else in the settlement could show.

But in the days that followed Miles had little time to go seeking flowers on the hillslopes, or gossiping with his sister in the twilight. For, with never a minute of daylight to rest, the whole colony worked now in good earnest,—taking alewives in the brook, tugging them up into the fields, setting the little hills with corn seed and with fish to keep it moist. To crown all, the planting fell in a season of heat, and an intense heat, unlike the milder warmth of England, that sapped the heart of the stoutest worker.

The first day Miles was bidden to plant corn, putting two shiny alewives into each hole, and Jack Cooke was set to plant the row next him. But unhappily they chattered so much that Miles presently realized, in some horror, that he had supplied several hills with alewives, but no corn, and, while he was pulling up the ground to set the matter right, came Master Hopkins. He was angry; not that he blustered, but he cuffed Miles smartly, and, saying he could not be trusted at such important work, sent him down to the shore to labor hereafter.

From that time on, Miles tugged fish,—a dreary task, in which he was coupled with Francis Billington, another scatter-head. They had a great flat Indian basket, in which they heaped the alewives, taken all slippery from the big pile that lay upon the river brink; then they would lift the basket between them, to each a handle, and, panting and heaving, struggle up the steep bank from the river, and so through the settlement, out to the hot, open fields.

It was not a great load they could carry at one time, so their usefulness depended on the number of trips they made, but there they were sluggish. Often the basket upset, and they had to sit down to refill it; and again, more and more frequently as the hot days went on, they must halt to quarrel, when Francis vowed Miles was bearing down on his end of the basket, and Miles declared Francis was not doing his share.