Granny’s eyes twinkled. “Are you so sure you want her to be a staid and proper matron? Isn’t a sweetheart better?”
In the doorway stood a tall young chieftain, wearing a bonnet of gray eagle’s feathers, a stately, splendid young creature. The girl sat by the cradle, head bowed.
But the man’s face did not relax. “Look what happened on the day of the christening! When the neighbors came in from near and far, did they find the young mother in her rightful place in the chimney settle, dressed in the quilted paduasoy petticoat my mother brought over the mountains? They did not. They found her paddling the stream, her kirtle tucked up to her bare knees, her hair unbound like a maiden’s, dipping the babe in the water and him as naked as a newborn pig! What a sight for God-fearing folk on the Sabbath day!”
Granny chuckled aloud, and Ezra laughed too, a little reluctantly, as he could not help himself.
“Oh, I dare say it was a pretty enough sight. But what conduct for young Mistress Todd, matron of a year’s standing, mother of a son, wife of one of the coming men of the country—ahem!” He strutted a little, boyishly, his eye on Polly, trying to make her smile; but she did not smile. “Perhaps,” he added, sobering, “it was the Indian form of christening—but we are not savages.”
Granny put a quick, warning finger to her lips, and Ezra added, more gently:
“There, there. I do not wish to be always scolding, only to make my little wife more like other women. People are happier when they are like to those about them—isn’t it so, Granny? And sometimes I have a fear that my Polly is not as happy with us as I had hoped to make her. Eh, child?”
With a hand under her chin, he lifted her face till their eyes met. She returned his look, long and steadily. But she did not speak. He let her go, with a deep sigh.
“I had thought the child would loosen her tongue by this.” He spoke as if she were not present. “But no matter. Too little speech in a wife is better than too much, they say.”