The Real America in Romance, Volume 6 | Page 4

would be greatly for the public behoof, if we
women being of mature age and church members in good repute like
Ann Linkon might speak our minds of such baggage as Dorothe
Stevens without being adjudged and sent to the ducking-stool as she is
to be done. Wherefore is Dorothe Stevens so great that one must not
say ill of her that they be plunged in the pond? Did she but have her
deserts, would she be at home and Ann Linkon on the stool? Marry! I
trow not!"

"Prythee, good dame Woodley, be more chary of your tongue, lest you
be brought to judgment," interposed a more cautious sister.
Dame Woodley scowled and ground her teeth in silence for a short
interval, and then resumed:
"I speak only to you five who know the wife of John Stevens truly.
Despite all her airs and efforts to assume to herself a superiority, we
know full well she hath her faults."
"Verily, she hath," interposed a female who had her hood drawn low
over her face to protect it from the morning sun.
"And I have heard that she does lead poor John Stevens a miserable life.
What with her extravagance, her temper, and the way she does hate his
old mother whom he loves, his life must be a burden?" continued dame
Woodley,
"Little the pity for him, though," interposed the woman whose weak
eyes were half-hidden by her hood.
"Why say ye so, Sarah Drummond?"
"The more fool he to maintain such a creature."
"Marry! think you, Sarah, that a wife is like a shoe to be cast off at will?
John Stevens hath two children, whom he loves as ardently as ever
parent loved."
"I have known Dorothe Stevens to be kind and gentle," interposed a
woman who had not spoken before.
"Yet she is haughty, and she would have all the world believe her of
superior flesh and blood to ourselves. Doth not the Scriptures say that
'Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall'? Yea,
verily, I wish she would break her neck when she doth fall."
At this moment, one of the petty officers came to the group of gossipers
and cried:

"Go to! hold your peace, you prating dames! The prisoner comes."
A confused murmur swelled to a general hubbub as two men appeared
over the hill leading between them a woman about fifty-five years of
age. She was a strong, thin-visaged woman, whose cheek had been
bronzed by sun and weather. She was bareheaded, and her hair was
gathered in a knot at the back. Her gown, of a thick woollen stuff, fit
closely to her person, as if it had been made on purpose for the
punishment she had been adjudged to receive. She was talking in a loud
voice and gesticulating angrily with her head, for her arms were
confined.
"I will give ye a piece of my mind," she declared to her guards.
"Hold your peace, Ann!" cried the eldest of the guards.
"Hold my peace! Verily, I will, not hold my peace about such a hussy
as Dorothe Stevens. That I, a Christian and Puritan, should be ducked
for slandering one so foul as she! I choke at the thought."
"Marry! I wish you were silent."
"Silent, Joshua Chard, silent, indeed! Think ye that the fear of all the
water in James River will awe me to silence?"
"No, by the mass, it will not," answered his companion.
"Lawrence Evans, unholy papist, do not touch me!"
"I am not a papist."
"Come, Ann Linkon, let us have this execution done with," put in
Joshua, dragging the woman along.
The scene was now ridiculous enough to excite the laughter of even the
gravest Puritans. The pond and ducking-stool were in sight, and Ann
Linkon, with a persistence and strength that was marvellous, began to
pull back, and when she had set her heels firmly in the ground it
required the united strength of both guards to move her.

"I won't go! I won't be ducked! I won't! I won't!" she screamed at the
top of her voice.
"Nay, Ann, bright flower of loveliness, you shall have a soft seat."
"Shame on you, Joshua, to drag an old woman like me by the arm."
"Marry! I am not dragging you, dame Linkon. Your heels do stick like
a ploughshare in the ground."
The woman continued in her sharp, shrill voice to upbraid him:
"Ungrateful wretch, is it thus you serve one who fed you in your
infancy, when your mother had deserted you? Unhand me, indented
slave, and go back to your master, wretch--wretch--wretch!" she hissed,
as she went sliding on her heels, her toes horizontal and her knees rigid.
Her feet ploughed up the earth and stones, and the crowd