A Pilgrim Maid: A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620Taggart, Marion Ames
History
A Pilgrim Maid: A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620
Taggart, Marion Ames
Massachusetts -- History -- New Plymouth, 1620-1691 -- Juvenile fiction
Constance could not resist her curiosity. She wrapped herself in her
cloak against the cold and tied a scarf over her hair, before drawing
its hood over her head.
"You look like a witch, like a sweet, lovely witch," cried Damaris,
getting up from her knees on which she had seemed, and not unjustly, to
be worshipping her doll, whom she had at once christened Connie, and
running over to hug her sister, breathless. "Are you a witch, Constance,
and made my Connie by magic? No, a fairy! A fairy you are! My fairy,
darling, lovely sister!"
"Be grateful to Constantia, as you should be, Damaris, but prate not of
fairies. I will not let go undone all my duty as a Puritan and pilgrim
mother. Constantia is a kind sister to you, which is better, than a
fairy falsehood," said Dame Eliza, rallying something of her old spirit.
Constance kissed Damaris and whispered something to her so softly that
all the child caught was "Merry." Yet the lost word was not hard to
guess.
Then Constance went out and down the street, wondering what Giles had
meant. She saw a small group of men before her, near the general
storehouse for supplies, and easily made out that they were the younger
men of the plantation, including those that had come on the _Fortune_,
and that Giles and Francis Billington were to the fore.
Up the street in his decorous raiment, but without additional marking of
the day by his better cloak as on Sunday, came Governor Bradford with
his unhastening pace not quickened, walking with his English thorn stick
that seemed to give him extra, gubernatorial dignity, toward the group.
The younger lads nudged one another, laughing, half afraid, but not
Giles. He stood awaiting the governor as if he faced him for a serious
cause, yet Constance saw that his eyes danced.
"Good morning, my friends," said William Bradford. "Not at work? You are
apportioned to the building of the stockade. It is late to begin your
day, especially that the sun sets early at this season."
"It is because of the season, though not of the sun's setting, that we
are not at work," said Giles, chosen spokesman for this prank by his
fellows, and now getting many nudges lest he neglect his office. "Hast
forgotten, Mr. Bradford, what day this is? It offends our conscience to
work on a day of such high reverence. This be a holy day, and we may not
work without sin, as the inward voice tells us. We waited to explain to
you what looked like idleness, but is rather prompted by high and lofty
principles."
The governor raised his eyebrows and bowed deeply, not without a slight
twitching of his lips, as he heard this unexpected and solemn protest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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