“Goody Billington”—began the mother, flushing a little, but checking herself as she sat Sally up and pulled her little red flannel nightgown over her head, while she asked in quite another tone, “Did you see father, Betty?”
“Yes’m, and he sent me to tell you he’d not be home for a little while. Oh, mother, what do you think! I was running out north to find father, as you bade me, and just as he stepped out of the woods with his axe and Rover, we saw two Indians coming down the trail, and they were driving a man, a white man, in front of them; and he looked so tired and so sick, and all bent over as if he would fall down, and no hat or cloak, and his doublet tattered and torn like the scarecrow we dressed for the cornfield, and his poor hands all cut and bleeding and tied behind him with a strip of deer-hide, and one of the Indians holding the end of it, and every once in a while jerking it to make the poor man go on; for indeed he looked fit to fall every minute, and, cold as it was, the sweat dropped off the dark points of his hair and rolled down his poor dirty face. Oh, mother, I was like to cry at such a sight, and father”—
“Ay, what did your father do?” asked Priscilla eagerly, as, lapping the child close to her breast, she turned half round toward Betty, who with fixed eyes seemed witnessing again the piteous sight she described.
“Oh, father! He talked with them a little, but you know he is none so quick at the Indian, not like the captain”—
“Never mind,” interrupted Priscilla impatiently. “’Tis not for you to say another man’s quicker at aught than your father, but what came of it?”
“Why, when father had talked a little he shook his head and said in English, ‘Nay, I can make naught on’t; you must come to the governor;’ and then we all came on toward the housen, and daddy said to me that I should run home like a good girl, and tell you he would be here anon, when he had seen the governor.”
“Ay, he’ll not think of himself till every one else is served, but I’ll not let him balk himself of a good supper if I cook a dozen, one after the other.”
And Priscilla, stepping into the little bedroom off the kitchen, laid the sleeping baby in her cradle, and had no more than returned to the larger room when the door again opened to admit her husband, with a look of considerable perplexity upon his genial face.
“Well, goodman, and what’s it all about?” demanded Priscilla with her usual impetuosity, as, coming within the radius of her influence, John’s brow cleared, and an expectant smile softened his mouth.