After dinner, as he had expected, Sir Christopher received a visit from his host, who told him that the governor still awaited a reply to the letter he had sent by Indian runners to Governor Winthrop at the Bay, and that meanwhile Sir Christopher was to rest content where he was, or, if it better suited him, to walk about the town. “That proposal jumps well with mine own fancies,” replied Gardiner smilingly. “Your little daughter brought me these posies this morning, and told me of how and where they grow, and I should well like to study them in their habitat. I cherish a singular love for herbal lore, and have the theories of Fuchsius and Bauhin at my fingers’ ends.” “You should talk with our doctor, then,” replied Alden. “He is marvelously learned in all such matters, and can pluck you to pieces the prettiest posy that grows, and break your head with the learned names he’ll find in it.” “Ay, I doubt not,” returned Gardiner coldly. “But in my captivity I better love the company of a prattling child than of a man who may be mine enemy.” “Nay, friend, we’re none of us enemies of yours, nor of any but those who are enemies of God and the king; still so far as my will goes, Betty is free to walk with you if her mother needs her not.” “And may I ask of your courtesy that you will put the matter before your dame, as I am not like to see her?” “Surely, although the mistress bade me say that she is presently coming to look once more at your wounded hands and arms.” “Oh, they are all but well. Sound flesh and good blood like mine heal apace.” And Sir Christopher, with a self-approving smile, held up his well-shaped hands and straightened his comely figure. John Alden looked and listened, but made no response, unless a slow smile that began almost imperceptibly, and widened and widened until it showed nearly all his broad white teeth, could be called so. But before it gained its full development he had left the room. CHAPTER XVII. “TWO IS COMPANY, THREE IS TRUMPERY!” And so it fell that about three o’clock that afternoon, as Sir Christopher Gardiner and Betty Alden wandered along the southern foot of Burying Hill, then called Fort Hill, searching under the lee of every rock and clump of bushes for the epigæa, as often to be found by its pure spicy fragrance as by sight of its coy clusters of pink and white blossoms, Prissie Carpenter, a little basket in her hand, came strolling along the brookside, rather ostentatiously bound upon the same errand. “Now would I like the skill of a painter fellow I knew in Holland, one Martin Ryckaert, a man I could take by the heel and eat him body and bones as I would a prawn; but give him his charcoal and his paints and his canvas, and he’d picture out this scene for you as if you saw it.”