"Follow John and Edward Tilley! Yes, but not for many a day!" Constance reassured her, shaking up the girl's pillow, one deft arm beneath her head to raise it.
"Sleep, Humility dear, and do not think. Or rather think of how sweetly the wind will blow through the pines when the spring sunshine calls you out into it, and we go, you and I, to seek what new flowers we may find in the New World."
"No, no," Humility moved her head on the pillow in negation. "I will be good, Constance; I will not murmur. I will remember that I lie here in God's hand; but, oh Constance, I cannot think of pleasant things, I cannot hope. I will be patient, but I cannot hope. Dear, dear, sweet Constance, you are like my mother, and yet we are almost one age. What should we all do without you, Constance?"
Constance turned away to meet Doctor Fuller's grave gaze looking down upon her. "I echo Humility's question, Constance Hopkins: What should we all do without you? What a blessed thing has come to you thus to comfort and help these pilgrims, who are sore stricken! Come with me a moment; I have something to say to you."
Constance followed this beloved physician into the kitchen where her stepmother was busy preparing broth, her Mayflower baby, Oceanus, tied in a chair on a pillow, Damaris sitting on the floor beside him in unnatural quiet.
Dame Eliza looked up as the doctor and Constance entered, but instantly dropped her eyes, a dull red mounting in her face.
She knew that the girl was ministering to the dying with skill and sympathy far beyond her years, and she remembered the patient sweetness with which Constance, during the voyage over, forgiving her injustice, had ministered to her when she was suffering—had tenderly cared for little Damaris.
Dame Eliza had the grace to feel a passing shame, though not enough to move her to repentance, to reparation.
"Constance," Doctor Fuller said, "I am going to lay upon you a charge too heavy for your youth, but unescapable. You know how many of us have been laid to rest out yonder, pilgrims indeed, their pilgrimage over. Many more are to follow them. Mistress Standish among the first, but there are many whose end I see at hand. I fear the spring will find us a small colony, but those who remain must make up in courage for those who have left them. I want you to undertake to be my right hand. Priscilla Mullins hath already lost her mother, and her father and her brother will not see the spring. Yet she keeps her steady heart. She will prepare me such remedies as I can command here. Truth to tell, the supply I brought with me is running low; I did not allow for the need of so many of one kind. Priscilla is reliable; steady in purpose, memory, and hand. She will see to the remedies. But you, brave Constance, will you be my medical student, visiting my patients, lingering to see that my orders are carried out, nursing, sustaining? In a word do what you have already done since we landed, but on a greater scale, as an established duty?"
"If I can," said Constance, simply.