"Nay, William, she is hardly older than our own dear girls, and it would ill become us who still carry our own lives in our hands to deprive a poor silly maid of hers."
"So the best road out of the maze is to cure the captain," remarked Doctor Fuller dryly. "After that we'll marry the girl to John Howland, and trust him to keep her quiet. Here they come."
And in at the open door came the governor and Howland, Desire and Priscilla, who carried in her hand a little box full of half-dried leaves, which she presented to the doctor, who solemnly pulling from his pocket a pair of clumsy iron-bowed spectacles put them astride his nose, and taking the herbs to the window carefully examined them, while all the rest stood anxiously around staring with all their might.
"Hm! Hah! Yes, well yes, I see, I see!" murmured the botanist, and then turning to Bradford he fixed him with a meditative gaze over the tops of his barnacles and said,—
"You know something of botany, Governor. Say you not that this is the Platanthera Satyrion, the herb supposed to give vigor to the hearts of those wild men whom the mythologists celebrate?"
"Is it? I should have taken it for the iris whose flower I have noted in these swamps."
"'T is akin, ay, distant kin, but with the difference that maketh one harmless, and 't other deadly. I will take it to Sister Winslow's house and examine it with my books, but still I can aver at once that 't is Platanthera; and if it is also Satyrion I will promise that it shall prove only nauseous and distasteful to our good Captain, and by no means deadly. I will go to see him."
"And John Howland," said the Governor turning toward the young man who stood looking with aversion at the figure of Desire, who with her head in her apron wept loud and angrily, "it seemeth to me that since this maid is betrothed to you, and is manifestly unfit to guide herself, that it is best for you to marry her here, and now, and after that train her into more discretion than she naturally showeth."
"May it please you, Master Bradford, and you, Elder," replied Howland coldly, "it seemeth to me that a woman who shows so little modesty in the pursuit of one man is scarce fit wife for another. I did indeed promise my late dear mistress whose ward this girl was, that I would care for her, and if need be take her to wife; but sure am I that if that godly and discreet matron could know of all this, she would hold me free of my bonds, the rather that I have never looked upon her with that tenderness that God putteth in our hearts toward those"—
"Nay, then, if it comes to that," interposed Desire, snatching away her apron and showing a swollen and tear-stained face, "I hate and despise thee, John Howland, and always have and always will; and if I took thee for my bachelor at all it was only in hope that 't would give a jealous twinge to the heart of a better man, and if at the last I failed of him thou wouldst be better than none; but I've changed my mind, and now I'll none of thee, not if ne'er another man"—