“Both, since they come to a confluence. We have been thither trading for beaver, and will have a port there soon, if God will.”
“Well, this Purchase is a big man down there, and meaning to be bigger; so, having a house, he came to Boston to purvey himself a wife; and who should he pick from among all the fair and godly maids and widows of that pious village but Mary Grove, who has been waiting there until the magistrates should settle within their own minds which of the Lady Gardiners might claim the plucking of her feathers. Yes, sir; Thomas Purchase, with his eyes and his ears open, chose Mary Grove to be his wife, Sir Christopher gave his consent and his blessing, and the lord’s brethren, as Blackstone calls them, hailed with joy so clear a course out of the muddle they’d fallen into with this woman. So Winthrop himself married them, and Purchase, having his boat at hand, well stocked with the barter of the beaver he had brought up, carried his bride aboard, and also,—now mark you well, for here’s the very moral of the jest,—also he took aboard Sir Christopher Gardiner himself, and away they all sailed for Sagadahoc. There, what think you of that, gossip?”
“I think Master Thomas Purchase a singularly charitable man,” replied Bradford with a dry smile. “But let us hope that Mary Grove convinced him that she was more sinned against than sinning, and had not done the wrong this villain’s second wife imputed to her.”
“Ay, ay, doubtless you as a church-member are bound to find some such way out of the thing; but to the mind of a plain old sea-dog like Bill Pierce ’tis a marvelous merry tale, with no moral tacked to the end on’t.”
And possibly this conversation had something to do with the fact that when Thanksgiving Day came round, Priscilla Carpenter became the wife of William Wright.
CHAPTER XX.
BETTY’S JOURNEY AND THE GARRETT WRECK.
“Betty, child, thou’rt not well. Thy little face is so peaked and pined I hardly know my winsome lassie. What is’t, maiden?”