"Why sure I would," replied the girl pettishly. "Why should any of us want to stay? There's plenty of hard work and plenty of prayers I grant you, and when you have said that you've said all. No decent housen, no butcher's meat, or milk, or garden stuff, or so much as a huckster's shop where one might cheapen a ribbon or a stay-lace—what is there here to live for?"
"Naught for thee, my poor Desirée, I'm afraid," said Priscilla almost tenderly. "And I wish thou couldst go home, but a maid may not venture herself alone."
"I know she may not, and I tried to make my cousin Carver think as I do, that so she might persuade the Governor to go, but wow! at the first word she fell upon me with such a storm of words"—
"Sweet Mistress Carver storm!" cried the two girls derisively, and Priscilla added more gravely,—
"I can fancy what she tried to make thee feel, Desirée; but thou couldst not feel it, and mayhap most young maids like us could not, but thou seest Mary and I are different; our fathers and our mothers came hither with their lives in their hands to do a work, and we came to help them. Well, the lives were paid down and the work was not done, so we who remain, simple maids though we be, are in a manner bound to carry on that work, and not let them have died quite in vain. And their graves are here."
Mary Chilton bowed her head upon her knees, and for a moment there was a great silence, then Desire said querulously,—
"Well, but what is there for me to do?"
"Come home and help me cook the dinner!" cried Priscilla jumping to her feet, while practical Mary added, "And I dare say some man will marry thee, Desire, and thou mayest have children."
"I! I'll marry no man here—save one!" protested Desire tossing her head and rising more slowly.
"Save one! Now is that happy he named John Howland?" asked a merry voice at her elbow, and Desire with a start and a laugh exclaimed,—