"A little patience should not be hard for men who have patiently waited so long," said he smiling. "Let us all break our fast with thanksgiving."
"One more cup of broth and a bit of the hare," said Priscilla gayly, as she set a little table beside her precious invalid. "And to-morrow I doubt not but I can offer you a posset of white flour and sugar and spice and all sorts of comfortable things. Whatever the ship may be 't is sure to have the making of a posset in her."
"Oh Priscilla, dear maid, if it might be,—if I dared think of my two girls"—
The trembling voice gave way, and for a moment Priscilla could not speak. Then she cheerily said,—
"If not themselves there is sure to be news of them, and God is very good. Pr'ythee take the broth."
"There then, good child. Now go to thine own supper. Mary is placing it upon the board."
Dropping a light kiss upon the face lovingly upturned, Priscilla passed into the outer room where upon the great table standing to-day in Pilgrim Hall rested a wooden bowl filled with boiled clams, and beside it a dish of coarse salt and a pewter flagon of water. Only this, no bread, no vegetable, no after course; but at the head of the table stood the elder, his worn face radiant with gratitude, as, uplifting his voice, he gave thanks to God for that he and his might "suck of the abundance of the seas and of the treasures hid in the sand."
After midnight a breeze sprung up, but the master of the Anne cautiously waited for the full tide to float him over the many flats then as now obstructing Plymouth Harbor, and it was not until another sunrise that the travel-worn and over-crowded bark folded her patched sails and dropped her anchor not far from the old anchorage ground of the Mayflower.
The governor no longer tried to restrain the enthusiasm of his townsmen; in fact, he himself helped to drag up the anchor of the pinnace and make her ready for a visit to the stranger. With him went Jonathan Brewster to see if perchance his sisters might be on board; and Doctor Fuller, and Robert Hicks, and Francis Cooke, and William Palmer, and Master Warren, albeit not fit even for so small an exertion, for every one of these men thought it possible that his wife might be aboard, nor was one of them disappointed, for the Anne, might well have dropped her anchor to the tune of "Sweethearts and Wives," so laden was she with those precious commodities.
"Come Captain!" called Bradford as the dory lay ready to transport the last three to the pinnace already under sail.