"When I find too much pepper in thy soup, Pris, I'll e'en go cool my tongue with Dame Alice's comfitures; and when I fancy one new-wed pair were as content without me, I'll e'en go and inflict myself upon t' other."
"And the captain will keep house with only Hobomok," said Priscilla dubiously.
"Nay, Kit Conant is to 'bide with them, and do certain service, and I shall still be in and out," said Barbara briskly. "Like enough the most they eat will be of my brewing. We shall do well enow for the captain. But, Priscilla, what ailed thee not to wed him, since his comfort sits so nigh thy heart?"
"Why, 't is but Christian to pity them who are in need, yet none can wed with more than one man at a time, and from the first I knew that John Alden was the one for me. Wed him thyself, Barbara, and send Kit Conant about his business."
A sudden color surged all over Barbara's face, and the wonderful eyes shot out an angry spark, but after a moment she quietly said,—
"Myles and I have ever been more like brother and sister than cousins. His mother was all as one with mine own."
"Ay, and so it is. Yes, yes, I see," said Priscilla hurriedly, but when Barbara had left her she stood for many minutes drumming on the table, and thoughtfully gazing through the open door at the blue wonder of the sea.
And now the wedding day had come, a glorious golden summer day, and some of the older folk, whose habits of early life held rigidly to the soil since planted anew to a Separatist crop, remembered that it was Lammas Day. One of these was Elizabeth, Master Warren's new-come wife, and as she looked abroad in the early morning, she sighed a bit and said,—
"A year agone, Richard, I looked upon another guess sort of scene than this. The church bells were ringing and the people trooping in, and many was the goodwife who brought her loaf baked of the first-fruit wheat to offer it for the parson's table if not for the Communion"—
"Nay wife, nay, remember Lot's wife," chided the husband, already so far upon his way to that abode of Light where shall be no Separatism and no uncharity.