“True enough, Will, and your thought is a rebuke to mine.”
“Nay, wife, ’tis you that teach me to be charitable.”
And the two, come together to reap in the glorious St. Martin’s summer of their days the harvest sown amid the chill tears of spring, looked in each other’s eyes with a smile of deep content. The woman was the first to set self aside, and cried,—
“Come, come, Sir Governor! To business! Mistress Allerton, and her daughters, Mary and Remember, Bartholomew, and the Prences, Constance Hopkins with Nicholas Snow, whom she will marry, the Aldens, the captain and his wife”—
“He is hardly to be ranked with the young folk, is he?”
“No, dear, no more than Master Allerton, or, for that matter, the governor and his old wife; but there, there, no more waste of time, sir! Who else is to come, and who to be left at home?”
“Nay, wife, I’m out of my depth already and will e’en get back to firm land, which means I leave all to your discretion. Call Barbara and Priscilla Alden to council, and let me know in time to put on my new green doublet and hose, for I suppose I am to don them.”
“Indeed you are, and your ruffles and your silk stockings that I brought over. I will not let you live altogether in hodden gray, since even the Elder goes soberly fine on holidays.”
“Well, well, I leave it all to you, and must betake myself to the woods. Good-by for a little.”
“Good-by, dear.”