“Not your wife!” echoed he. “Nay, nay; if I’d known that, I would not have named her in presence of this modest gentlewoman. But how is it, then, that she spake of you as her lord? Nay, I’ll not push the matter, sith I see ’tis an over-delicate matter. Wow! this wind cuts through one’s blood. Mistress Prissie, I much fear me you’ll catch a megrim if you linger longer by the brookside, and Betty, ’tis high time thou wert helping thy mother with the supper; run home, little maids, and Sir Christopher, I’ll show you something more to your taste than spring flowers and young lassies. Come up to the Fort and help me fire the sunset gun.”
Sir Christopher’s face was very dark, and possibly enough the captain had not so easily taken his captive, but that Prissie Carpenter, ashamed and terrified at the meaning she suspected under the captain’s debonair look and voice, had already fled toward the village, followed by Betty with a basket full of flowers, but a conscience full of thorns.
Seeing that resistance had thus become useless, the knight gloomily accepted his defeat, and clomb the hill beside the captain, whose jovial manner suddenly dropped into silence, nor did he speak until the two men stood upon the roof of the Fort. Then, while the sun, disdaining the mantle of gold and purple officiously presented by the western clouds, sank in undimmed glory to the horizon, and resting there an instant seemed to view once more the fair domain he now must abandon, Standish, his lighted match in one hand, laid a finger of the other upon his companion’s breast.
“Sir Christopher Gardiner,” said he, “we breed no Mary Groves in these parts, and yon young gentlewoman is the sister of our governor, and the promised wife of one of our worthiest citizens. ’Twould go hard with the man that trifled with her, and well do I hope no more hath been said than is soon forgotten and will leave no blot behind.”
“Since when hath Myles Standish added the duty of father confessor to his other cares?” demanded Gardiner with a sneer.
“Ask rather, what sin hath he committed so notable as to call for the penance of listening to thy confession, my son?” retorted the captain good-humoredly. “Nay, man, take my hint in good part, as indeed ’tis meant. This maid is not for thy fooling, and thine own affairs are like to give thee trouble enough without mixing and moiling them further. Ha! the sun is going”— Puff! and the dull boom of heavy metal resounded across the quiet town, and startled the eagle circling above his nest on Captain’s Hill.
Then the two men went silently down the hill, and whatever may have been the knight’s secret resolves of virtue, he never again found the opportunity to test them.
“Now, Betty,” said her mother, as the family rose from that meal we call tea, but they named supper, “I will put the babies to bed, and then step up the hill to Mistress Standish’s to see little Lora, who is worse of her measles to-night, and thou wash up the dishes and redd the kitchen, and then go to bed like a good little lass. I’ll take in the gentleman’s supper, and ask what he fancies for his breakfast. John, you’ll find me at the captain’s when ’tis time for lecture.”
“Ay, dame; and meantime I’ll smoke a quiet pipe here with Betty and dry my wet feet.”