Looking up, Love almost dropped the tulip in her joy. Then she set it down and rushed into his arms.
“Father, dear father! Oh, where have you been so long?” she cried.
It was a story told between laughter and tears. Goodman Bradford, only a short time since released from prison, had come straight to Amsterdam, but he had been able to find no trace of Love. Mistress Brewster had gone on with the Pilgrims to America, and there was no one to tell Goodman Bradford where his little daughter was. Now, he could make a home for her and reward Jan’s mother.
“I was patient,” Love said, “as you bade me be, and see,” she cried as, hand in hand, they reached the quaint little cottage where Jan and his mother stood at the door to greet them, “in good time they both came to me—the pink tulip, and my father.”
[Big Hawk’s Decoration]
“See to it, Preserve, that you win a colored ribbon from the schoolmaster to-day,” Mistress Edwards said as she turned from her task of polishing the pewter platter to look at the boy who stood in the doorway of the log cabin.
“THE LOG CABIN WAS BUT A ROUGH HOME”
“This is the day, I hear, on which the good-conduct ribbons are given out for the month, brightly dyed ones for the boys and girls whose lessons have been well learned, and black for the dunces. There is no chance of your coming home to me to-night without a ribbon of merit, is there?” The Colonial mother crossed the room and put her hands on her lad’s shoulder, looking anxiously into his honest brown eyes.