"One type of beauty belongs to these. At St. Gabriel's yonder you were beautiful like a great lady of the court. To-day you are beautiful like the Blessed Virgin."
"Hush! You speak something akin to blasphemy."
"Nay, not a whit. Did not the old masters paint Our Lady from the women around them, and none so fair as you?"
"A pretty model for a sacred figure I should make, with my homespun apron and a bunch of keys in my hand."
"They might be the keys of Heaven if the hand were in mine."
"Master Ingle, I have told you more than once that I could listen to no such talk from you."
"Your word is law," said Ingle, bowing low. Then with a swift turn of the tide of talk, "I must tell you how narrow an escape these ducks had from becoming food for some dirty red man instead of lying in state on your table. I shot them on the river a day or two since. Father White asked me to go with him as interpreter on a mission among the Patuxents. We took a boat and two chests, one containing clothing along with bread and butter and cheese and corn, and another containing bottles of wine for the eucharist and holy water for baptism. But in the night the savages broke into the tent where that dolt of a servant slept, and stole the sacramental wine and our chest of clothing and all the food save one pat of butter and a cheese-cake.
"Father White was so pleased that the sacred vessels were untouched that he fell on his knees, giving thanks as though the whole affair were a great mercy; and for me, to tell the truth, when I found the ducks I did shoot for you were still there, I heeded no other loss."
Elinor came nearer to a smile than the last month had witnessed. There was consolation in knowing that there was still some one to whom she was first, whose only thought was the gratification of her tastes and fancies.
"They are in the nick of time," she said, "to garnish our supper to-night, when I do expect my cousin, Margaret Brent, who comes to spend some time under my roof. Perhaps you will join us."