Now as she ascended the hill her eyes rested upon the home Rolfe had built for her. It was to the eyes of Englishmen, accustomed to the spacious manor houses of their own country, little more than a cabin. But to one who had seen nothing finer than the lodges of her father's towns, it was a very grand structure indeed, with its solid framework of oak, its four rooms, its chimney of brick and its furnishings sent over from London. Her husband had promised her that they should bring back many other wonderful arrangements when they returned from England.
She was a little warm from her climb and was looking forward to the moment when she could discard her clothes for her loose buckskin robe and moccasins. Rolfe, though he did not forbid them altogether, was not pleased at the sight of them; and Pocahontas this day was conscious of a slight feeling of relief that there were to be several days of his absence in which she could forget to be an Englishwoman.
She might forget for a while but only for a while for she was a happy and dutiful wife; but she could never forget that she was a mother, that her wonderful little Thomas, not so white as his father, nor so dark as herself, was waiting for her at the house. She hurried on, thinking of the fun she would have with him: how she would take him down to a stream and let him lie naked on the warm rocks, and how she would sing Indian songs to him and tell him stories of the beasts in the woods, even if he were too little to understand them.
She had left him in his cradle where, protected by its high sides, he was safe for hours at a time, and the workmen who were helping her husband start a tobacco plantation at Varina looked in often to see if he were all right.
She entered the house and hurrying to the cradle, called out:
"Little Rabbit, here I am."
But when she bent over the side, behold! the cradle was empty.
She looked in every room, but found no sign of him. Then she rushed to the door and called. Three of the men came running, and they told her, speaking one on top of the other, how half an hour after she and their master had left one of them had gone to look at the child and found the cradle empty. Since then they had been searching the place over, but with no success.
It was quite impossible for the child to have got away alone; yet who would take him away? Indians or white folk, there was none in all Virginia who would dare injure the grandchild of Powhatan.
When she had listened to what they had to say, Pocahontas bade them go and continue their search. When she was alone she sat down, not on the carven chair a carpenter had made her in Jamestown, but on the floor, as she had so often sat about the lodge fire when she wished to think hard.