“’Tis all these buryings, John, that work on the child’s tender heart, and she heard us talking last night of poor Fear Allerton’s passing. ’Tis she that’s going up the hill now; and see! they’ve got Thomas Prence and Philip De la Noye and Thomas Cushman and John Faunce for pall-bearers, and Isaac Allerton and the Elder are chief mourners. You should have been there, John, for Allerton was ship-fellow with us in the Mayflower, and she was a dear gossip of mine always.” “And so I would have been but for that spike running into my foot and making a cripple of me,” replied Alden with a rueful look at his bandaged foot. “Shouldst not have left thy harrow lying on ’s back with its teeth grinning up to the sky,” suggested Priscilla absently, and then taking from the mantelshelf a bit of stick and a sheath knife she cut a notch at the end of a long line, and counting said,--“Eleven on my tally-stick already, and some of the best, alas! Peter Browne,--mind you, John, how he and Goodman roosted in a tree all night for fear of the ‘lions,’ and ne’er a one here? And Francis Eaton, he’s gone, and left Christian Penn a widow. I’ll warrant me she’ll go back to the governor’s kitchen. Then there’s the captain’s two little boys. Poor Barbara! Truly I believe, John, of the hundred Mayflowers that came ashore there’s not a score left.” “There’s two and twenty of us, counting them who were children, like Henry Samson and Peregrine White,” said John sadly. “Ah, you’ve kept the tally in your head better than I with my stick,” said Priscilla, laying it aside. “And to think of Pris Carpenter, widowed almost as soon as she’s wed. William Wright has left her all that he had, Alice Bradford says.” “Ay; and glad am I that Sir Christopher Gardiner hath gone back to his two wives in England before she came into her fair estate.” “Nay, Pris would not have looked crosswise at him after she heard the story Captain Pierce gave the governor. She was too sound a maid to listen to any such golightly cavaliers as this man proved himself. But, John, did you hear of the will that Widow Ring has made, and tied up everything on her boy Andrew? And there’s Susanna Clark and Betsey Deane been the best of daughters, and tended her hand and foot, and she as full of whims as an egg is of meat; and when she’d for very shame’ sake given Susan a pair of pillows, she had to tuck in that Andrew was to have the feathers out of ’em. Think of that for a mother! And Susan Clark, she’s to have the making of a baby’s bearing-cloth out of a piece of red cloth the widow had laid up, and Betsey Deane’s child, she’s to have the rest on’t. And who’s to have the widow’s three say gowns, one of green and two of black, I mind not, but all Betty told me of getting was one ruffle that her mother bought of Goodman Gyles, who had it out of England in a present, and she gave him four shillings for it, but”--