"Nay, but I did, that is, I gathered the nuts for thee, and then—then feared if I offered them thou 'dst only flout me"—
"Oh, sure never was a poor maid so bestead with blind men—well, fetch thy beechnuts."
"Nay, Priscilla, but blind, blind? How then am I blind, maiden, say?"
"Why, not to have discovered ere this how I dote upon beechnuts. There, get thee gone for them."
The dressing of beechnuts proved a rare success, but the preparation proved so long a process that only the delicate young bird made ready for the table where Mistress Brewster presided was thus honored, although in after times Priscilla often made what she called goose-dressing; and when a few years later some sweet potatoes were brought to Plymouth from the Carolinas, she at once adopted them for the same purpose.
And so the festival went on for its appointed length of three days, and perhaps the hearty fellowship and good will manifested by the white men toward their guests, and their determination to meet them on the ground of common interests and sympathies, went quite as far as their evident superiority in arms and resources toward establishing the deep-founded and highly valued peace, without which the handful of white men could never have made good their footing upon that stern and sterile coast.
On the Saturday the feast was closed by a state dinner whose composition taxed Priscilla as head cook to the limit of her resources, and with flushed cheek and knitted brow she moved about among her willing assitants with all the importance of a Bechamel, a Felix, the maître-d'hôtel of Cardinal Fesch with his two turbots, or luckless Vatel who fell upon his sword and died because he had no turbot at all; or even, rising in the grandeur of the comparison, we may liken her to Domitian, who, weary of persecuting Christians, one day called the Roman Senate together to decide with him upon the sauce with which another historic turbot should be dressed.
Some late arrivals among the Indians had that morning brought in several large baskets of the delicious oysters for which Wareham is still famous, and although it was an unfamiliar delicacy to her, Priscilla, remembering a tradition brought from Ostend to Leyden by some travelers, compounded these with biscuit-crumbs, spices, and wine, and was looking about for an iron pan wherein to bake them, when Elizabeth Tilley brought forward some great clam and scallop shells which John Howland had presented to her, just as now a young man might offer a unique Sèvres tea-set to the lady of his love.
"Wouldn't it do to fill these with thy oyster compote, and so set them in the ashes to roast?" inquired she. "Being many they can be laid at every man's place at table."
"Why, 't is a noble idea, child," exclaimed Priscilla eagerly. "'T will be a novelty, and will set off the board famously. Say you not so, John?"