"Sister, we rejoice with you." Or some said: "Be of good consolation, and Heaven's blessing be upon you." A few merely shook her hand and passed on.
Before many had thus filed past, Myles Standish leaped to his feet and cried: "Stephen, Stephen Hopkins, come! There's a wild cat somewhere!"
Stephen Hopkins went out after him, thankful to escape.
"Poor old comrade," said Captain Standish, putting his hand on the other's shoulder. "If only good and sincere people would consider what these scenes, which relieve their nerves, cost others! There is a wild cat somewhere; I did not lie for thee, Stephen, but in good sooth I've no mortal idea where it may be!"
He laughed, and Stephen Hopkins smiled. "You are a good comrade, Myles, and we are as like as two peas in a pod. Certes, we find this Plymouth pod tight quarters, do we not, at least at times? I've no liking for airing private grievances in public: to my mind they belong between us and the Lord!—but plainly my wife sees this as the right way. What think you, Myles? Is it going to be better henceforward?" he said.
"No doubt of that, no doubt whatever," asserted Myles, positively. "And my pet Con is the chief instrument of Dame Eliza's change of heart! Well, to speak openly, Stephen, I did not give thy wife credit for so much sense! Constance is sweet, and fair, and winsome enough to bring any one to her—his!—senses. Or drive him out of them! Better times are in store for thee, Stephen, old friend, and I am heartily thankful for it. So, now; take your family home, and do not mind the talk of Plymouth. For a few days they will discuss thee, thy wife, thy son, and thy daughter, but it will not be without praise for thee, and it will be a strange thing if Giles and I cannot stir up another event that will turn their attention from thee before thy patience quite gives out."
Myles Standish laughed, and clapped his hand on his friend's shoulder by way of encouragement to him to face what any man, and especially a man of his sort, must dread to face—the comments and talk of his small world.
The Hopkins family went home in silence, Stephen Hopkins gently leading his wife by her arm, for she was exhausted by the strain of her emotions.
Giles and Constance, walking behind them with the children, were thinking hard, going back in their minds to their early childhood, to the beautiful old mansion which both remembered dimly, to the Warwickshire cousins, to their embittered days since their stepmother had reigned over them, and now this marvellous change in her, this strange acknowledgment from her before everyone—their every-one—of wrong done, and greater wrong attempted and abandoned. They both shrank from the days to come, feeling that they could not treat their stepmother as they had done, yet still less could they come nearer to her, as would be their duty after this, without embarrassment. Giles went at once to his room to postpone the evil hour, but Constance could not escape it.
She unfastened Damaris's cloak, trying to chatter to the child in her old way, and she glanced up at her stepmother, as she knelt before Damaris, to invite her to share their smiles. Dame Eliza was watching her with longing that was almost fear. "Constance," she said in a low voice. "Constance——?" She paused, extending her hands.