“No. Sally is more like her mother,” replied John simply, and as the boat drew in to the wharf all three men looked approvingly at the two young girls just budding into maidenhood, and forming as sweet and pure a contrast as the moonlight and the dawn to which the courtly Winslow had compared them; for Betty in her wholesome growth had as it were absorbed color from the sunshine, willowy strength from the sea breeze, and fragrance from the epigæa, until her brown eyes sparkled and glinted like the sea in a sunny morning, and her crisp hair had netted the summer into its meshes, and her cheeks and lips throbbed with soft bright color like the petals of a wild rose. But Lora, as tall already as her friend, although several years younger, was slight as a flower stalk, her pale gold hair almost too heavy for her little head, her soft gray eyes almost too large for the pure oval of her face, the sweet color of her mouth too faintly reproduced in her cheeks. If Betty Alden resembled the dawn of a summer morning upon sea-girt field and forest, Lora Standish brought to mind a garden of annunciation lilies bathed in moonlight.
And now as the fond fathers gazed, and Winslow’s golden tongue dropped phrases sweet in their ears as honey of Hymettus, John Howard, ancestor of a grand line of Bridgewater yeomen, but at present in the household of Standish, deftly gave his tiller a turn that laid the boat’s nose softly against the pier, while Hobomok, with an inarticulate grunt of welcome, seized the line tossed him by John Alden and made it fast around an oaken pile well bedded in the wharf.
In a few moments the boat was empty, and its passengers mingled with the eager crowd who pressed forward to greet them. Chief of these was the new pastor, Ralph Partridge, a “gracious and learned man,” an alumnus of Cambridge and for twenty years a clergyman of the Established Church of England, but now, as Mather quaintly has it, he, “being distressed by the ecclesiastical setters, had no defence neither of beak nor claw, but a flight over the ocean. The place where he took covert was the Colony of Plymouth, and the Town of Duxbury in that Colony. This Partridge had not only the innocence of the dove, but also the loftiness of the eagle in the great soar of his intellectual abilities,” etc.
To this gentleman as the principal person among his guests Standish addressed himself, and taking from the breast of his doublet a package carefully enveloped in oiled silk, opened it and showed a sheet of parchment, brief as to its contents and crude as to its chirography, but bearing some very distinguished autographs, and carrying with it an importance to that group of people similar to that possessed in the eyes of a young wife by the title deeds of her new home, her dower house, and the birthplace of her future children.
“Here is the charter, reverend sir, and now the people of Duxbury have a right to invite you to become their pastor,” said the captain bluntly; but as Partridge took the parchment he looked at the man who gave it and said softly,—
“Shall I be your pastor, Captain Standish?”
“Nay, sir, this is no time for such questions,” replied Standish, rather displeased, and turning away he entered the house to lay aside some of his heavy clothes and don festal attire. In the principal room, deep in whispered council, stood Barbara Standish and Priscilla Alden, two comely and gracious matrons, at sight of whom the captain’s face softened into a merry smile.
“Now what mischief are you plotting, you two with your heads together like Guy Fawkes and Tyrrell?” exclaimed he. “Priscilla, never teach your rebel fashions to my well-trained dame, or I shall have her snatching at the reins!”
“And you’d rather she’d ride the pillion and cling to your belt with a ‘Good master, have a care of me’!” cried Priscilla, her dark eyes flashing as brightly as they had done some sixteen years before while she said, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?”
“’Tis a woman’s rightful place, and I’ll be bound, when all’s said, you came over here to-day on a pillion with only your boy Jack to cling to.”