“We will escort you there,” said the stalwart young fellow Abigail had first noticed. Before she could protest, to her indignation he had seized her and swung her up on his broad shoulder, passed her arm around his neck, and rested her feet on his broad palm.
“Now I have placed you above learning, little mistress,” he cried gayly; “duck your head as we go through the door.”
Abigail clasped his neck tightly, and lifted up her heart in prayer. Intense was her mortification to observe how the people turned and looked after them. She grew faint at the thought of her father’s awful, pious eye beholding her.
“They may be much for learning,” she murmured, glancing over the heads of the students, “but, beshrew me, they be like a pack o’ noisy boys. Oh, Deliverance, Deliverance, how little ye kenned this torment!”
Chapter XV
Lord Christopher Mallett
Down many a crooked street and round many a corner, the crowd of students bore her, until at last they reached the Governor’s place, “a faire brick house” on the corner of Salem and Charter streets.
Above the doorway were the King’s arms richly carved and gilded. Some stone steps led down the sloping lawn to the street, which was shut out by a quaint wooden fence.
Here, at the lanterned gateway, the student who carried Abigail set her down upon the ground.