“Oh, no. Only he loves to magnify his brother, who is more than dear to him. But go on, Bab, with your story.”
“Well, dear, I tried to talk with the captain when we were alone, but the wound was too deep and too angry to bear much handling, and so I e’en left it to nature and to grace. But at the end he consented that Josiah should marry, and he would talk with John Dingley about setting up the young folks, and he promised never to say another bitter word to Josiah about it; but on the other hand he would not go to the marriage, and he bade me tell the poor lad that he was not to bring his lass to the house either before or after they were married, for no, not for one half hour should Lora’s place be filled, nor should any woman call him father so long as he lived.”
“He bade Alick tell Sally as much as that, and she hasn’t been anigh your house since,” interposed Sally’s mother indignantly; but Barbara raised her shadowy blue eyes so piteously, and looked so imploringly into her friend’s face, that a misty softness suddenly filled Priscilla’s own eyes, and petting the other’s hand she said,—
“There, there, gossip, ’tis all right! Go on, go on.”
And Barbara, smiling faintly as one well used to control her own feelings, and to make allowance for the impetuosity of others, went on: “So I told Josiah, and he told Mary, and she her father and mother, and not one of them would hearken to any marriage so shadowed, nor could I blame them. All that was a year ago, and Josiah has been as good a son as ever man could ask ever since; but a week apast or so, he spoke to me, and said his youth was going, and Mary was of full age, and ’twas not right that he should ask her to wait in her father’s house till her younger sisters were married over her head, and he had made up his mind to go to Connecticut and make a home whereto he might carry his wife. John Haward could manage the farm, and Hobomok the fishing and boats, and perhaps his brother Myles after this voyage would settle down awhile at home. Oh, Priscilla, when I heard that word I felt as if the end had come, and I must e’en lay down under the burthen that I could not carry. Alick gone, and Myles gone, and my one sweet maid gone, and my two dear little fellows left over on Burying Hill at Plymouth, and now Josiah, the one whom, God forgive me, I haply loved the best”—
“No, no, it sha’n’t be, it can’t be,” interrupted Priscilla impulsively. “Myles shall listen to reason; he shall see that what he calls grief has grown into cruel selfishness. I’ll tell him so; I’ll talk to him”—
“’Twas what I came to ask of you, dear Pris! Well do I know, that from the days before I came until now, Myles has held you in singular tenderness, and you may say to him things that no one else dare, and that I will not say lest he mistake it for chiding, or for want of love, or—well, now, how can I say it, Priscilla, but you know as well as I, that when a woman has once made her husband ashamed of himself, she has lost what she never will recover in his eyes. Our masters love not to be mastered by a woman, and she the one sworn to obedience.”
“And so you’d put me in that place and make sure that hereafter Myles shall not love me too well!” exclaimed Priscilla petulantly, and in the same breath added, “No, no, that was but a peevish jest, and you know it, Bab. Wait, now, till I take counsel with myself, for there’s a thought lurking somewhere in the back of my head that I’d fain catch and look in’s face before I say more.”