"Well, worshipful sir, 't is a little advice. Your honor sees that I am a poor lonely lass, bereft now of even my cousin Carver's husband"—
"Nay, my girl, our late governor was more than 'even my cousin's husband.' Pay honor to him rather than to me."
"Ay, but he is dead and cannot help me, and thou art alive."
"'And better a live dog than a dead lion,'" murmured Bradford looking sorrowfully at the girl whose selfish cunning was not keen enough to disguise itself.
"Well?"
"Why, I fain would know your honor's judgment upon my marriage."
"Thou marry! And who is the man?"
"Why, there now is the question, sir? Captain Standish hath showed me that he fain would ask me to wife, did not Priscilla Molines woo him so desperately"—
"Peace, child! How dare one Christian woman speak thus of another!"
"But 't is so, your worship; 't is so, indeed, and how can I gainsay it?" whimpered the girl. "She as good as asked him when we were sick together in the hospital, and she wrought upon her father to ask him, and what could he do between them, and still he would rather have had me to wife, and I would have not said him nay."