"If ever I have time," she murmured in a laughing aside to Mr. Stacy, "I will try to hunt up some Mayflower ancestors, for I can't let Priscilla continue to be so superior to me in this respect."
"Indeed, I don't feel superior," said Priscilla, "but I can't tell you how pleased I am, Martine, that you have stopped making fun of Plymouth and the Pilgrims."
"Dear Prissie, you should not take things so seriously. My fun was only fun, and you were too ready to take it in as earnest."
Martine from the first had no trouble in winning the affection of all the Danforths. George and Marcus struggled for the first place in her affections, and Lucy admitted that she loved her next to her mother and Priscilla. Martine made other friends in Plymouth besides the members of the Danforth family. A number of Mrs. Danforth's special friends called on her, and at an informal tea-party she met all the young people whom Priscilla cared for especially.
"Every one seems to have heard of me, I am awfully pleased that you should have talked to people about me, but why am I called a 'heroine'? Three people have said to me, 'We are so pleased to meet the young heroine we have heard so much about.' What do they mean?"
"It's the fire," cried Lucy. "Priscilla told us not to say too much to you about it, because you were so modest, but everybody knows how brave you were to pull Priscilla out of the burning house."
"The burning house? Oh, at Windsor; but I didn't pull her out. There wasn't the least danger, and I only tapped at the door. Why, I had almost forgotten about it. It was nothing at all, so far as I was concerned."
But Lucy only shook her head, as she repeated shyly, "But we think you a heroine all the same." Nor could any words of Martine's have made her change her mind. Had she not always been taught that the truly great were modest? Martine's very denials were a strong evidence that she was truly great.
There was nothing, therefore, for Martine to do but accept the place on the pedestal where they put her.
In spite of this idealizing, however, Priscilla's younger friends were not afraid of Martine. If they had felt any awe before they saw her it immediately passed away when they had looked into her frank brown eyes, and had heard the clear notes of her ringing laugh.