“You can’t catch me, Betty! You can’t have the plums till you catch me, and you can’t—ah, now—catch if you can—catch if you can!”
But Betty, shrieking with laughter as she dived this way and that, suddenly grew so grave and frowned so terribly as she pointed her chubby finger and stammered, “Go ’way—s’ant look o’ me—go ’way man!” that Priscilla turned sharply round, and catching the interloper in the very midst of a broad smile, she frowned, almost as terribly as Betty, and loftily inquired,—
“Am I in your path, Master Wright?”
“Nay, how could that be?” stammered Wright, utterly abashed before his two accusers. “I pray you excuse me, Mistress Prissie, but I—I was looking for the governor, and”—
“The governor?” interrupted Priscilla scornfully; “well, he’s not in my pocket, is he in yours, Betty?”
And catching up the child, she was retreating into the house, when her admirer interposed with an air of dignity more becoming to his age and appearance than the confusion of a detected intruder upon a girl’s pastime,—
“Nay, mistress, I need not drive you away; I am going to the Fort.”
“Well, there is the governor coming down from the Fort so as to leave room for you,” retorted Prissie, and setting the child inside the door, she fled down the hill as lightly as the wind that chased her.
“Good-morrow, Wright,” cried Bradford cheerily, as the two men met.
“Good-morrow, Governor. May I have a word with you on business?”