“But what is it?” she begged to know, in an agony of curiosity.
“Hush, I will whisper in your ear,” he said. “It were not meet to speak such a thing aloud.”
Goody Parsons bent her grey head to listen, and started back at the shoemaker’s low-spoken words.
“Ah, surely that can not be true of so good a Puritan!” she cried in horror.
“You may believe me or not, according to your will,” returned the shoemaker testily. “You were there but now; did you hear naught?”
Loyalty to her dear Master Simon and love of giving information struggled for a moment in the Goody’s withered face, but at last the words simply burst from her.
“I did hear a strange cry,” she said. “Ah, woe is me to think ill of so good a man! Come with me toward my house, Neighbour Skerry, and I will tell you what the sound was like.”
So off the two went together, their heads bent close, their lips moving busily, as they gossiped with words that were to travel far.
Only Master Simon, his wife and his daughter, Margeret, knew the real reason why his garden and fields had greater success than any other’s, knew of the ceaseless labour and genuine love that he expended upon his plants and flowers. Margeret loved them also, and would often rise early and go out with him to weed the hills of Indian corn, water the long beds of sweet-smelling herbs or coax some drooping shrub back to life and bloom. It was pleasant to be abroad then, when the grey mists lying over the wide, quiet harbour began to lift and turn to silver, when the birds were singing in the great forest near by and the dark-leaved bayberry bushes dropped their dew like rain when she brushed against them. Then she would see, also, mysterious forms slipping out of the dark wood, the graceful, silent figures of the friendly Indians, who also got up before the dawn and came hither for long talks with their good friend, Master Simon. They brought him flowers, roots and herbs that grew in this new country, while he, in turn, gave them plants sprung from English seed, taught them such of the white men’s lore as might better their way of living and offered much sage counsel as to the endless quarrels that were always springing up among them between tribe and tribe.
“It is strange and not quite fitting that those heathen savages should follow you about like dogs,” the villagers used to tell him, a little jealous, perhaps, that he should be as kind to his red-skinned friends as he was to his Puritan comrades. But Master Simon would only smile and go on his way, undisturbed by what they said.