"There will be amusement for thee; come out, but never say I bade you come. You can make an errand."
"Oh, Giles, you are not plotting mischief?" Constance implored, seeing the fun in her brother's eyes and fearing an attempt at Christmas fooling.
"No harm afoot, but we hope a little laughter," said Giles, nodding mysteriously as he left the house.
Constance could not resist her curiosity. She wrapped herself in her cloak against the cold and tied a scarf over her hair, before drawing its hood over her head.
"You look like a witch, like a sweet, lovely witch," cried Damaris, getting up from her knees on which she had seemed, and not unjustly, to be worshipping her doll, whom she had at once christened Connie, and running over to hug her sister, breathless. "Are you a witch, Constance, and made my Connie by magic? No, a fairy! A fairy you are! My fairy, darling, lovely sister!"
"Be grateful to Constantia, as you should be, Damaris, but prate not of fairies. I will not let go undone all my duty as a Puritan and pilgrim mother. Constantia is a kind sister to you, which is better, than a fairy falsehood," said Dame Eliza, rallying something of her old spirit.
Constance kissed Damaris and whispered something to her so softly that all the child caught was "Merry." Yet the lost word was not hard to guess.
Then Constance went out and down the street, wondering what Giles had meant. She saw a small group of men before her, near the general storehouse for supplies, and easily made out that they were the younger men of the plantation, including those that had come on the Fortune, and that Giles and Francis Billington were to the fore.
Up the street in his decorous raiment, but without additional marking of the day by his better cloak as on Sunday, came Governor Bradford with his unhastening pace not quickened, walking with his English thorn stick that seemed to give him extra, gubernatorial dignity, toward the group. The younger lads nudged one another, laughing, half afraid, but not Giles. He stood awaiting the governor as if he faced him for a serious cause, yet Constance saw that his eyes danced.
"Good morning, my friends," said William Bradford. "Not at work? You are apportioned to the building of the stockade. It is late to begin your day, especially that the sun sets early at this season."