“There, now, I’m glad you spoke on’t, John! I’ll lap his arms with a good woolen bandage, and you must lend him your old horseman’s cloak to wrap himself withal. The governor’ll fetch it some day when he goes up to visit the Bay governor again.”
“Nay, wife, I don’t see but thou dost humbly follow thy God, and love the sinner while thou dost hate the sin.” And John slowly and fondly smiled down upon the petulant brown face of the wife he still loved as well as when first he wooed her.
“Oh, I know not how that may be, my Jeannot,” replied Priscilla, laughing and blushing a little as she saw herself trapped. “But here’s the little book.”
“Ay, here’s the little book, and to my mind the best thing is for me to carry it straight to the governor and let him do with it as he lists. ’Tis a matter too weighty for us to handle alone.”
“Doubtless you’re right, John, and here it is,” and Priscilla, with a little sigh of vague regret, handed the book to her husband, and watched him as he at once left the house to carry it to the governor.
But Betty kept the pudding warm for his supper.
That afternoon Sir Christopher Gardiner, formally made over to the custody of Captain John Underhill and Lieutenant Dudley, son of the deputy-governor, sailed out of Plymouth wearing John Alden’s cloak, in which he sullenly muffled the lower part of his face, while a slouched hat nearly covered the upper.
“Are you sick?” bluntly demanded Underhill, who had orders to treat his prisoner honorably and kindly.
“Nay, I’m sorry,” retorted the knight.