And jumping up, Priscilla went to a cupboard, and taking out a decanter of canary wine and a loaf of seed-cake, placed them before her guest with a napkin and a sheath-knife. Then, lifting a forefinger to silence Barbara’s acknowledgments, she went to the open door, and stood plucking some withered leaves and faded flowers from the white rosebush with automatic tidiness, but with a mind altogether unconscious of the body’s occupation.
A few moments of summer silence followed, that living silence of summer so different from the deadly silence of winter, and then, suddenly flinging her handful of leaves and roses upon the ground, Priscilla turned, and coming back into the room cried triumphantly, “I have it now, Barbara! ’Tis Betty!”
“Betty!” echoed Barbara dropping the morsel of cake from between her fingers. “What about Betty?”
“She’s the one to speak to Myles about Josiah and Mary Dingley.”
“Betty!”
“Yes, Betty. See here, now, woman; ’tisn’t that I’m afeard of Myles,—the dear knows that I never yet quailed before the face of man; but, Bab, you’ve hit on one sad truth about our masters, and I’ll give you another. They ill brook to be taught by their wives, say you, and I will add, they still love a fair young face better than one whereon they’ve watched the wrinkles come and the bloom fade out. Some thirty years ago I was a comely lass enough, and our gallant captain thought me so; but he’s seen me at least five times a sennight ever since, and I could tell you well-nigh the day he stared long and shrewdly in my face and said in his heart, ‘She’s lost her comeliness’”—
“Nay, nay, Pris, he’s said more than once that Sally’s not a patch upon her mother.”
“Upon what her mother was once, was what he meant, gossip, no matter what he said. Oh, don’t tell me, Bab! If I know naught else in this world, I know Priscilla Alden, and I can spell out a page or so of Myles Standish. But pass all that, and come to Betty.
“It’s not only that she’s far comelier than ever her mother was, but she’s fresh and new in her matronhood; as a maid she held her tongue before her elders as a maid should do, and I’ll lay you a pretty penny that the captain don’t guess she has a tongue, and a headpiece to keep it in, that’ll match any man in the colony, if once she starts out. Now what I say is, that she shall go in boldly, as Esther did to Ahasuerus, and speak her mind, and as Esther said, If she die, she dies. Thank goodness, the captain can’t kill her outright, and she can stand a strange word or two in Dutch better than poor Parson Partridge did.”