"They are very beautiful, thy flowers," said Pocahontas, smiling at them and at their giver, "and sweeter than the blossoms that grow in my land."
"Yet those are wonderful, too. I have heard of many glorious trees and vines which grow there and I would that I might see them."
"If thou wilt cross the ocean with us when we return, I will show thee many things that would be as strange to thee as thy land is to me. I would take thee to my father, Powhatan, and he would give dances in thine honour that would not be"—and she laughed again at the thought—"like the ball my Lord Bishop giveth me."
Lady De La Ware smiled, too. She had been told something about the Indian customs.
"Perhaps some day thou shalt take me to thy father's court; but now I am come to take thee to that of our Queen. She hath expressed her desire to see thee shortly. A letter which was written her by Captain John Smith about thee hath made her all the more eager to do honour to one who hath ever befriended the English."
"Captain John Smith hath written to the Queen about me?" said Pocahontas, marvelling.
"In truth, and since his words seemed to me worthy of remembrance, I have kept them in my mind." He begins:
"'If ingratitude be a deadly poyson to all honest vertues, I must be guiltie of that crime if I should omit any meanes to be thankfull. So it is that some ten years ago being in Virginia, and taken prisoner by the power of Powhatan, their chief King, I received from this great savage exceeding great courtesy, especially from his son, Nautauquas, the most manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit I ever saw in a savage, and his sister, Pocahontas, the King's most dear and well beloved daughter, being but a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, whose compassionate pitiful heart, of my desperate estate, gave me much cause to respect her—she hazarded the beating out of her own brains to save mine ... the most and least I can do is to tell you this, because none so oft tried it as myself, and the rather being of so great a spirit, however her stature, if she should not be well received, seeing this Kingdom may rightly have a Kingdom by her means—' And much more there was, Lady Rebecca, which I cannot now recall."
Lady De La Ware did not know that Pocahontas believed Smith dead, and Pocahontas, not imagining anything else, thought Smith must have written this letter from Jamestown before he died; and her heart grew warm thinking how, even dying, he had done what he could for her happiness on the mere chance of her going to England. The truth of the matter was that Smith was then at Plymouth, making ready to start on an expedition to New England; and though he did not expect to see Pocahontas, he wished England, and first of all England's Queen, to know what they owed this Indian girl.
It happened not long after that "La Belle Sauvage," as the Londoners sometimes called Pocahontas, and Rolfe were being entertained at a fair country seat. An English girl, much of the age of her guest, whose curiosity about the ways of the Indians was restrained only by her courtesy, had been showing her through the beautiful old garden. They had talked of Virginia, and Mistress Alicia coaxed: