“I’ll look at none but you,” promised Gillian gently, but her active brain was already shaping the query, “What does he know? What has he heard?” and then replying to itself, “What matter! Fools all of them, and I the worst fool of all.”
So amidst the frank, possibly unrefined, certainly hearty merriment of the time and place the roast pig and roasted russet apples were eaten, and the loaf of seed-cake and another of fruit-cake were cut in great wedges and passed around, and a choice comfiture of wild cranberries with candied lemon peel and plenty of sugar was served on little wooden trenchers, carved in the winter evenings by Samuel Jenney as a present to his bride; and there was plenty of beer and cider, which to our hardy sires were no more injurious than cold water to us, who have bred nerves in place of their muscles and brawn; and there was sweet Spanish wine for the ladies, passed from hand to hand in a little pewter wine-cup, burnished like silver; and there was a good joram of punch for every man; and the girls with little gasps and chokings put their lips to the edge of the rummers, while Gillian, nestling close to William Bradford’s side, was gentle and quiet as a chidden child, and spoke to none but him, eating the while as a bird might, and no more, until in his heart the young man felt that William Pabodie was after all something of a churl, and not over courteous to the governor’s guest, and Pabodie forgetting them both watched Betty Alden, who now and again glanced at or spoke to him just as she did to Sam Jenney or John Howland, and was the brightest, the merriest, the most winsome lass of that gay circle of men and maids.
“And now we’ll go, Will,” whispered Gillian, as all rose from the table.
“Yes, poor little Jill, we’ll go now,” replied Bradford far more tenderly than ever he had spoken before; and Joseph, who heard it, turned sharply, and surveying his brother with astonishment whispered,—
“If there’s a score, need we make it two-and-twenty, Bill?”
“Gillian is tired, and I am taking her home in the boat,” answered William coldly. “Will you come with us, or on foot later?”
“Take care of yourself, man, and I’ll give as good an account of myself,” retorted Joe a little huffed, and presently the governor’s boat glided down Town Brook, which glittered like a stream of silver under the full moon. In the stern, her elbow on the gunwale and her hand supporting a sorrowful face upturned to the sky, reclined Gillian, a dusky red shawl half covering her neck and arms, and throwing up in startling relief the exquisitely molded hand and wrist lying palm uppermost upon her knee.
Close beside her sat Bradford, silently dreaming a young man’s vague sweet dreams of the wonder of womanhood, while the Indian boatman, erect and silent as a bronze automaton, guided the boat down the rapid stream, and far within the dewy covert of the wood a whippoorwill made his perpetual moan, echoed softly back from the breast of Dark Orchard Hill.
At the mill, the after-supper fun grew fast and furious, and who but Betty Alden to lead and queen it with a gay vivacity of invention and power of will that made itself felt by all within its reach, while William Pabodie, his own man once more now that the strange sorcery of Gillian’s presence was withdrawn, calmly bided his time, and at last, when Giles Hopkins, over from Barnstable on a visit, was trolling a sea-song and all the rest joining in the chorus, he edged between Betty and the girl next to her, saying,—
“Come out to the doorstep, Betty; I’ve something to say to you before I go home.”