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
"Follow John and Edward Tilley! Yes, but not for many a day!" Constance
reassured her, shaking up the girl's pillow, one deft arm beneath her
head to raise it.
"Sleep, Humility dear, and do not think. Or rather think of how sweetly
the wind will blow through the pines when the spring sunshine calls you
out into it, and we go, you and I, to seek what new flowers we may find
in the New World."
"No, no," Humility moved her head on the pillow in negation. "I will be
good, Constance; I will not murmur. I will remember that I lie here in
God's hand; but, oh Constance, I cannot think of pleasant things, I
cannot hope. I will be patient, but I cannot hope. Dear, dear, sweet
Constance, you are like my mother, and yet we are almost one age. What
should we all do without you, Constance?"
Constance turned away to meet Doctor Fuller's grave gaze looking down
upon her. "I echo Humility's question, Constance Hopkins: What should we
all do without you? What a blessed thing has come to you thus to comfort
and help these pilgrims, who are sore stricken! Come with me a moment; I
have something to say to you."
Constance followed this beloved physician into the kitchen where her
stepmother was busy preparing broth, her _Mayflower_ baby, Oceanus, tied
in a chair on a pillow, Damaris sitting on the floor beside him in
unnatural quiet.
Dame Eliza looked up as the doctor and Constance entered, but instantly
dropped her eyes, a dull red mounting in her face.
She knew that the girl was ministering to the dying with skill and
sympathy far beyond her years, and she remembered the patient sweetness
with which Constance, during the voyage over, forgiving her injustice,
had ministered to her when she was suffering--had tenderly cared for
little Damaris.
Dame Eliza had the grace to feel a passing shame, though not enough to
move her to repentance, to reparation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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