Standish of Standish | Page 8

Mary Chilton came forward, a long gray stocking dangling from her hands, and stood in a slant ray of sunshine which lighted her golden hair to a glory, and showed the pure tints of her May-bloom face and clear blue eyes; a lovely English face in its first fresh rapture of morning beauty.
"Right merrily will I come, Priscilla, if there be aught to see," continued she, throwing down the stocking which she was knitting for her father. "Truly my eyes ache with staring at nothingness."
"Well, there's a trifle this side of nothingness on the beach at this minute," retorted Priscilla, pinching her friend's ear. "Men call it Gilbert Winslow."
"Hush, hush, Priscilla!" whispered Mary, with a scared look toward her mother's cabin. "If anybody heard such folly! And Mistress White already tells my mother that we two are over-light in our carriage and conversation."
"Mistress White"--began Priscilla sharply, but ended the exclamation with a saucy laugh and said instead, "Yes, truly as thou sayest, my May, mine eyes ache with gazing upon nothingness and my tongue aches with speaking naught but wisdom. It is out of nature for young maids to be as staid as their elders, and methinks I do not care to be. Let us be young while we have youth, say I."
She looked perilously pretty as she arched her brows and pouted her ripe lips, and Mary looked at her in loving admiration, while she answered sagely,--
"You and yours are French, Priscilla, and I am all English like my forbears; so thou mayst well be lighter natured than I--I mean no harm, dear."
"No harm is done, dear mother in Israel," replied Priscilla half mockingly, and seizing Mary's hand she led her on deck, where many of the women and children were collected, watching the preparations on shore for the launch of the pinnace, which, much strained by bad stowage between decks, had needed about a fortnight's work done upon her before she was fit for service.
"They only wait for her to set forth on a second exploration," said Priscilla confidentially; "and a little bird sang in my ear that they would go to-morrow."
"What little bird?" asked Mary curiously; but before Priscilla could reply another voice interposed; it was that of Bridget Tilley, who had come on deck to seek her daughter Elizabeth, and now sharply inquired,--
"Another expedition, say you? And my goodman scarce brought back from death's door, whither the first jaunt led him! Nay, now, 't is not right, 't is all one as murder, to hale dying men out of their beds and into that wilderness. No blessing will follow such work, and I'll cry upon the governor or the captain or the elder to stop it!"
"What is it, Mistress Tilley? Any wrong that I can help set right?" asked a sweet voice, and Bridget turned toward the speaker with a somewhat more subdued manner, lowering her voice as she said,--
"Thank you kindly, Mistress Standish, and God be praised that you can be on deck; but my matter is this," and again she poured out her anxieties and her fears, until Rose Standish, a fair white rose now, and trembling in the shrewd autumn air so soon to scatter her petals and bear the pure fragrance of her life down through the centuries, until men to-day love her whom they never knew, leaned wearily against the bulkhead and said,--
"Rest easy, dear dame. Thou 'rt all in the right, and it behooves us to protect our lords from their own rash courage, just as it befits their courage to protect us against salvages and wild beasts. I will whisper in my husband's ear that Master Tilley is all unfit to carry out his own brave impulses, and I will conspire with Mistress Carver and Mistress Bradford, and, above all, with our dear mother, the elder's wife, that each shall make petition to her lord to see that no sick or overborne man be allowed to adventure himself on the expedition. Will that satisfy thee, dame?"
"Right well, and you are all one with the saints we used to honor, though we do know better now."
"'T is the most comfortable promise I've heard in many a day, dear Mistress Standish," cried Priscilla vivaciously. "And well do I believe that the whispers of the wives are more weighty than the shouts of the husbands. I've never proved it myself, being but a maid; yet I have ere now marked how the prancing of the noblest steed is full deftly checked by a silken rein."
"It were well if a rein were put upon thy tongue, girl," severely interposed a comely matron sitting near. "Thou 'rt over forward for thy years, Priscilla. Shamefastness and meekness become a maid, and when thou knowest more thou 'lt say less."
"Thanks, Mistress White, I will try to