As fast as willing hands could work, taking it in continuous shifts by night as well as day, the community house went up. But the storm was upon the colonists before the shelter was ready for them, and even when the roof covered them, the cold laughed it to scorn, entering to wreak its will upon them.
Sickness seized one after another of the pilgrim band, men and women alike, and the little children fought croup and pneumonia, nursed by women hardly more fit for the task than were the little victims.
Rose Standish, already weakened by the suffering of the voyage, was among the first to be prostrated. She coughed ceaselessly though each violent breath wracked her frail body with pain. A bright colour burned in her cheeks, her beautiful eyes were clear and dilated, she smiled hopefully when her companions in exile and suffering spoke to her, and assured them that she was "much, much better," speaking pantingly, by an effort.
The discouragement with which she had looked upon the coast when the Mayflower arrived, gave place to hope in her. She spoke confidently of "next spring," of the "house Captain Myles would build her," of all that she should do "when warm weather came."
Constance, to whom she most confided her plans, often turned away to hide her tears. She knew that Doctor Fuller and the more experienced women thought that for this English rose there would be no springtime upon earth.
Constance had other troubles to bear as well as the hardships and sorrows common to the sorely beset community. She seemed, to herself, hardly to be a young girl, so heavily weighted was she with the burden that she carried. She wondered to remember that if she had stayed in England she should have been laughing and singing like other girls of her age, skating now on the Sherbourne, if it were frozen over, as it well might be. Perhaps she might be dancing, if she were visiting her cousins in Warwickshire, her own birthplace, for the cousins were merry girls, and like all of Constance's mother's family, quite free from puritanical ideas, brought up in the English Church, so not debarred from the dance.
Constance had no heart to regret her loss of youthful happiness; she was so far aloof from it, so sad, that she could not rise to the level of feeling its charm. Dame Eliza Hopkins had carried out her threat, had accused Giles of the theft of his father's papers, and Constance of being party to his wrong-doing, if not actually its instigator.
It had only happened that morning; Constance heavily awaited developments. She jumped guiltily when she heard her father's voice speaking her name, and felt his hand upon her shoulder.
She faced him, white and shaken, to meet his troubled eyes intently fastened upon her.
"The storm is bad, Constance, but it is not warm within. Put on your coat and come with me. I must speak with you," he said.