"Giles, Giles, will you come to try what you can do with Damaris's sleeping hammock?" she called.
"What's wrong with it?" demanded Giles, rising reluctantly, but following Constance, nevertheless.
"I don't know, but Mistress Hopkins says she cannot repair it and that the child is like to fall with its breaking some night," said Constance, entering again the small, close cabin of the women. "Here is Giles, Mistress Hopkins; he will try what he can do," she added.
Giles examined the hammock in silence, bade Constance bring him cord, and at last let it swing back into place, and straightened himself. He had been bent over the canvas with it drawn forward against his breast.
"I see nothing the matter with the hammock except a looseness of its cords, and perhaps weakness of one where I put in the new one. You could have mended it, Con," he said, ungraciously, and sensitive Constance flushed at the implication that her stepmother had not required his help, for she never could endure anything like a disagreeable atmosphere around her.
"Giles says 'Con,'" observed Damaris, justifying herself for the use of nicknames.
"Giles does many things that we do not approve; let us hope he will not lead his young sister and brother into evil ways," returned her mother, sourly. "But thou shouldst thank him when he does thee a service, not to be deficient on thy side in virtue."
"You know Giles doesn't need thanks for what he does for small people, don't you, Hop-o-my-Thumb?" Giles said and departed, successful in both his aims, in pleasing the child by his name for her, and displeasing her mother.
Two hours later Constance was sitting rolled up in heavy woollens like a cocoon well forward of the main mast, in a sheltered nook, reading to Rose Standish, who was also wrapped to her chin, and who when she was in the open, seemed to find relief from the oppression that made breathing so hard a matter to her.
Mistress Hopkins came toward them in furious haste, her mouth open as if she were panting, one hand pressed against her breast.