Constance scarcely knew her stepmother. Silent, where she had been prone to talk; patient, where she had been easily vexed; with something almost deprecatory in her manner where she always had been self-assertive, Dame Eliza went about her round of work like a person whom her husband's daughter had never known.
Toward Constance most of all was she changed. Never by the most remote implication did she blame her, whereas heretofore everything that the girl did was wrong, and the subject of wearisome, scolding comment. She avoided unnecessary speech to Constance, seemed even to try not to look at her, but this without the effect of her old-time dislike; it was rather as if she felt humiliated before her, and could not bring herself to meet the girl's eyes.
Constance, as she realized this, began to make little overtures toward her stepmother. Her sweetness of nature made her suffer discomfort when another was ill-at-ease, but so far her cautious attempts had met with failure.
"We have been in Plymouth a year, lacking but a sen' Night, Stepmother," Constance said one December day when the snow lay white on Plymouth and still thickened the air and veiled the sky. "And we have been in the New World past a year."
"It is ordered that we remember it in special prayer and psalmody to the Lord, with thanksgiving on the anniversary of our landing; you heard that, Constantia?" her stepmother responded.
"No, but that would be seemly, a natural course to follow," said Constance.
"There is not one of us who is not reliving the voyage hither and the hard winter of a year ago, I'll warrant. And Christmas is nearing."
"That is a word that may not be uttered here," said Dame Eliza with a gleam of humour in her eyes, though she did not lift them, and a flitting smile across her somewhat grimly set lips.
"Oh, can it be harmful to keep the day on which, veiled in an infant's form, man first saw his redemption?" cried Constance. "There were sweetness and holiness in Christmas-keeping, meseems. If only we could cut out less violently! Stepmother, will you let me have my way?"
"Your way is not in my guidance, Constantia," said Dame Eliza. "It is for your father to grant you, or refuse you; not me."