“Now this bold assumption, which would have made some men laugh, and set others upon opposition, just jumped with the humor of our new friend, and taking off his hat, he held out a hand for ours; saying, handsomely enough, that he had heard marvelous tales of our captain’s prowess, and also of the wisdom, and I know not what, of Plymouth’s governor. Faith, I know not but he said he had crossed the seas to look upon two such marvels! Certes, he gave no other motive, since in religion he seems of that convenient stripe which fits with any pattern, and for hard work he is no better fitted than is his cousin and housekeeper, whose lily-white hands could ill trundle a mop or work a churn-dasher.”
“And what do they honestly seek here in the wilderness?”
“Why, truth to tell, I fear me they seek nothing honestly, but the rather a dishonest refuge from judgment. If ever woman wore a guilty and shamefaced look, it was that poor wench when first she met us; and as for the man, although he vapored much about his desire for a quiet life, far from the setbacks and downfalls of worldly affairs, and his love of sylvan solitudes and the like, I trust him not,—nay, not so far as just out of reach of a tipstaff’s clutch; he’s false, so false that even as he talked he seemed to sneer at his own professions.”
“But our Prissie, Will! If this is indeed the man she talked of”—
“Ay, that’s where the matter sits close to our hearts, wife. Did ever she talk of him to you, in the way of picturing out his face and mien?”
“Nay, for after that once I never would let her talk of him; but still she gave me the notion of a gay cavalier, such a man as haunts the king’s court, and as you say struts in Paul’s Walk,—a man who well might be the one you and the captain saw.”
“But—Mary Grove?”
The matron’s fair cheek flushed a little, for the purity of that age was of the order that hates sin without having learned to love the sinner, and shrinks back from the sight or touch of evil instead of fearlessly examining the hurt, and applying the oil and wine. The world does grow in good, let the pessimists deny it as they may.
“Pris will never know that the man is on this side the sea, unless we tell her,” said Alice presently.
“No. And I will caution the captain not to mention the matter.”