"My father sends me," he panted. "The men of Plymouth are to sit this afternoon at our house to hear the tale of the adventurers to the Massachusetts. You will come? Giles, did you bring us new kinds of arrows from the strange savages? My father saith that Squanto was the best guide and helper on this expedition that white men ever had."
"So he was, Love. I brought no new arrows, but I have in my sack something for each little lad in the colony. And for the girls I have wondrous beads," added Giles, seeing Damaris's crestfallen face.
"I will risk a reprimand; it can be no worse than disapproval from Elder Brewster, and belike they will spare me because of the occasion," thought Constance in her own room, making ready to go to the assembly that was to gather to welcome the explorers, but which to her mind was gathered chiefly to honour Giles.
Thus deliberately she violated the rule of the colony; let her beautiful hair curl around her flushed face; put on a collar of her mother's finest lace, tied in such wise by a knot of rose-coloured ribbon that it looked like a cluster of buds under her decided little chin. And, surveying herself in the glass, which was over small and hazy for her merits, that chin raised itself in a hitch of defiance.
"Why should I not be young, and fair and happy?" Constance demanded of her unjust reflection. "At the worst, and if I am forced to remove it, I shall have been gay and bonny—a wee bit so!—for a little while."
With which this unworthy pilgrim maid danced down the stairs, seized by the hand Damaris, who looked beside her like a small brown grub, and set out for Elder Brewster's house.
Although the older women raised disapproving brows at Constance, and shook their heads over her rose-tinted knots of ribbon, no one openly reproved her, and she slid into her place less pleased with her ornamentation than she had been while anticipating a rebuke.
Captain Myles Standish rose up in his place and gave the history of his explorations in a clear-cut, terse way, that omitted nothing, yet dwelt on nothing beyond the narration of necessary facts.
It was a long story, however condensed, yet no one wearied of it, but listened enthralled to his account of the Squaw-Sachem of the tribe of the Massachusetts, who ruled in the place of her dead spouse, the chief Nanepashemet, and was feared by other Indians as a relentless foe, and of the great rock that ended a promontory far in on the bay, at the foot of the three hills which were so good a site for a settlement, a rock that was fashioned by Nature into the profile of an Indian's face, and which they called Squaw Rock, or Squantum Head. As the captain went on telling of their inland marches from these three hills and their bay, and of the fertile country of great beauty which they everywhere came upon, there arose outside a commotion of children crying, and the larger children who were in charge of the small ones, calling frantically.
Squanto, admitted to the assembly as one who had borne an important part in the story that Myles Standish was relating, sprang to his feet and ran out of the house. He came back in a few moments, followed by another Indian—a tall, lithe, lean youth, with an unfriendly manner.