“If I had known it, the child never should have borne the name, and if I could I would change it now!”
And Barbara, seriously angry, rose from her chair and would have left the room, but her husband detained her.
“There, look you, now! I knew you would take it amiss, and told Ralph so, and he bade me keep it to myself, at all odds till the girl was born and named, and so I have. And yet I do not see what angers you so, Barbara, except that you ever favored your mother’s family, and held your Standish blood too cheap.”
“That quarrel well-nigh parted us ere ever we came together, Myles. Haply it had been better if we had been content to rest simply cousins and never married.”
“Commend me to a good woman for thrusts both deep and sure when once she is angered,” cried Myles, flinging out of the house and up the hill to his den in the Fort.
But when Alick and Betty Alden raced each other thither to tell him that supper was ready, the choleric captain had fully recovered his temper, and found his wife so placid and quietly cheerful that he supposed she also had both forgiven and forgotten.
Which shows that the great Captain of Plymouth understood the strategy of battle better than that of a woman’s heart. Nor did he ever note, that from that day Barbara never spoke her daughter’s name if it could possibly be avoided, calling her generally “my little maid,” and as the child grew, addressing her as May, the sweet old English contraction of maiden.
A few weeks later, as Barbara set the stirabout that sometimes served instead of furmety upon the table, her husband entered, and throwing his hat into Lora’s lap said in a tone of well deserving,—
“There, Bab, I’ve bought out Winslow’s share in the red cow for five pounds and ten shillings, to be paid in corn, and I’ve satisfied Pierce and Clark for their shares with a ewe lamb apiece, so now it is mine, and I give it to you. She’s not the kyloe cow you were longing for, but she’s your own.”
“Thank you, Myles,” replied Barbara, flushing with pleasure. “And is it quite settled that we are to go over to the Captain’s Hill as they begin to call it?”