She kissed Damaris before setting her on her feet, and the child kissed her in return, clinging to her.
"You are so funny, Constance!" she said, in great satisfaction with her sister's drollery in a world that had been filled with gloom and illness for what seemed to so young a child, almost all her life.
"Ah, I want to be, Damaris! I want to be funny, and happy, and glad! Oh, I want to be!" cried Constance, and ran away at top speed with a rare relapse into her proper age and condition.
[CHAPTER VII]
The Persuasive Power of Justice and Violence
John Billington had been forced reluctantly to work on the houses erecting in the Plymouth plantation.
He was not lazy, but he was adventuresome, and steady employment held for him no attraction. Since Captain Standish and the others in authority would deal with him if he tried to shirk his share of daily work, John made it as bearable as possible by joining himself to Giles in the building of the Hopkins house. Constance knew that she should find the two boys building her future home, and thither she ran at her best speed, and Constance could run like a nymph.
"Oh, Giles!" she panted, coming up to the two amateur carpenters, and rejoicing that they were alone.
"Oh, Con!" Giles echoed, turning on his ladder to face her, half sitting on a rung. "What's forward? Hath the king sent messengers calling me home to be prime minister? Sorry to disappoint His Royal Highness, but I can't go. I'd liefer be a trapper!"
"And that's what your appointment is!" triumphed Constance. "You're to trap big game, no less than a human rascal! Oh, Giles and Jack, do hear what I've got to tell you!"