"You can; there is no one else that I can count upon. The older men among us are dying, leaving the affairs of the colony to be carried on by the young ones. In like manner I must call upon so young a girl as you to be my assistant. The older women are doing, and must do, still more important work in preparing the nourishment on which these lives depend and which the young ones are not proficient to prepare."
Doctor Fuller looked smilingly toward Dame Eliza as he said this, as if he feared her taking offence at Constance's promotion, and sought to placate her.
Mistress Hopkins gave no sign of knowing that he had turned to her, but she said to Damaris, as if by chance: "This broth may do more than herb brews toward curing, though your mother is not a physician's aid," and Doctor Fuller knew that he had been right.
A week later, though Humility Cooper was recovering, many more had fallen ill, and several had died.
It was late in January; the winter was set in full of wrath against those who had dared array themselves to defy its power in the wilderness, but the sun shone brightly, though without warmth-giving mercy, upon Plymouth.
There was an armed truce between Giles and his father. The boy would not beg his father's pardon for having defied him. His love for his father had been of the nature of hero-worship, and now, turned to bitterness, it increased the strength of his pride, smarting under false accusation, to resist his father.
On the other hand Stephen Hopkins, high-tempered, strong of will, was angry and hurt that his son refused to justify himself, or to plead with him. So the elder and the younger, as Constance had said, too much alike, were at a deadlock of suffering and anger toward each other.
Stephen Hopkins was beginning his house on what he had named Leyden Street, in memory of the pilgrims' refuge in Holland, though only by the eyes of faith could a street be discerned to bear the name. Like all else in Plymouth colony, Leyden Street was rather a matter of prophecy than actuality.
Giles was helping to build the house. All day he worked in silence, bearing the cold without complaint, but in no wise evincing the slightest interest in what he did. At night, in spite of the stringent laws of the Puritan colony, Giles contrived often to slip away with John Billington into the woods. John Billington's father, who was as unruly as his boys, connived at these escapades. He was perpetually quarrelling with Myles Standish, whose duty it was to enforce the law, and who did that duty without relenting, although by all the colonists, except the Billingtons, he was loved as well as respected.
Early one morning Constance hurried out of the community house, tears running down her cheeks, to meet Captain Myles coming toward it.