"Good offices for what? My good offices? Why?" she snapped. "Why should you speak to Mr. Hopkins, with whose Christian name better men than you in this colony make less free? And still more I would know why you should speak either first or last to Mistress Constantia? That hath a sound that I do not like, John Howland!" John Howland stared at her, aghast, a moment, then he said: "It is my intent, Mistress Eliza Hopkins, to offer to wed Mistress Constantia, and that cannot mislike you. Young though she be, and somewhat frivolous, yet do I hope much for her from marriage with a godly man, and I find her comely to look upon. Therefore----" "Therefore!" cried Dame Eliza who seemed to have lost her breath for a moment in sheer angry amazement. "Therefore you would make a fool of yourself, had not it been done for you at your birth! Art completely a numbskull, John Howland, that you speak as though it was a favour, and a matter for you to weigh heavily before coming to it, that you might make Stephen Hopkins's daughter your wife? Put the uneasiness that it gives you as to her light-mindedness out of your thoughts, nor dwell over-much upon her comeliness, for your own good! Comely is she, and a rare beauty, to give her partly her due. And what is more, is she a sweet and noble lass, graced with wit and goodness that far exceed your knowledge; not even her father can know as I do, with half my sore reason, her patience, her charity, her unfailing generosity to give, or to forgive. Marry Constance, forsooth! Why, man, there is not a man in this Plymouth settlement worthy of her latchets, nor in all England is there one too good for her, if half good enough! Your eyes will be awry and for ever weak from looking so high for your mate. But that you are the veriest ninny afoot I would deal with you, John Howland, for your impudence! Learn your place, man, and never let your conceit so run away with you that you dare to speak as if you were hesitant as to Mr. Hopkins's daughter to be your wife! Zounds! John, get out of my sight lest I be tempted to take my broom and clout ye! Constance Hopkins and you, forsooth! Oh, be gone, I tell ye! She's the pick and flower of maidens, in Plymouth or England, or where you will!" John Howland rose, slowly, stiffly, angry, but also ashamed, for he had not spirit, and he felt that he had stepped beyond bounds in aspiring to Constance since Dame Eliza with such vehemence set it before him. Then, too, it were a strong man who could emerge unscathed from an inundation of Dame Eliza's wrath. "I meant no harm, Mistress," he said, awkwardly. "No harm is done, for the maid herself knows naught of it, nor any one save the governor, and he but a hint. Let be no ill will between us for this. I suppose, since Mistress Constantia is not for me, I must e'en marry whom I can, and I think I must marry Elizabeth Tilley."