“Thou art thinking, perhaps, that I, too, like these others, am come three thousand miles in search of a husband?”
I knew not what to say, and so I said nowt.
“Well, believe ‘t if you will!” she flung out, her eyes one blaze of wrath; “but believe not that thou art such a husband as I would seek—not though thou wert the only man on this side of the ocean, and though all the tobacco in Virginia were the price in thine hand.”
“I am not likely to believe that, Mistress Betty,” I answered bitterly. “Yet would I rather believe anything than that this journey is a mad prank of thine without rhyme or reason. Wild and venturesome thou hast ever been, but never unmindful of thy sex or thy station.”
“Which means that now I have shown myself unmindful of both. I thank thee, Humphrey Huntoon; but till I seek thy counsel, do thou keep thy censure!”
I know not what we might have spoken further, for anger was hot in both our hearts; but at that instant Dame Cary and her good man came in, bearing a roll of linen and a whale-oil lamp, which, vile smelling as it was, gave a brighter light than the candle.
As it shone on the maiden’s face, the look of illness and suffering was more plain to be seen; and I cursed myself for a fool that I had forgotten all this time the arm I had been called to tend. I took the linen from Dame Cary’s hand and tore it into strips.
“Will you be good enough to let me see the hurt?” I asked, in a constrained voice. Without a word, she threw back her short cape and showed me the right arm wound round and round with clumsy swathings, which I straightway set to work to unwind. It was well that my calling had trained the fingers to work coolly.
I went near to breaking out into oaths when I laid bare the arm and saw how great a bungler had had charge of the hurt there on the ship. As it was, that which had been so ill done must be undone.