“Come, come, dame, ’tis not for naught your tongue wags like Priscilla Alden’s all of a sudden. Tell me what man is on the hill with our Lora, and what ’tis you’re keeping from me,--or would if you could. Out with it, Bab! who’s the man I saw up there?” “Nay, Myles, that’s no tone for you to take towards me! ’Tis not one of the children nor one of the servants you’re speaking to.” “What! ruffling her feathers like a Dame Partlet if you try to steal the chickens from under her! Nay, wife, that mood’s as strange to you as the chattering one, and both are but put on to turn my mind from its course; but ’tis no use, Bab, no use at all. Come, now, stop these manœuvres and ambushes and false sallies and all your simple strategy, and meet me in the open field. Was it Wrestling Brewster that I saw sitting with Lora on her sunset seat?” “I know not what you saw, Myles, but I know that Wrestling Brewster went up there to find Lora something like a half hour ago.” “And you knew it?” “I sent him.” “You sent him! And for what?” “For naught more than to find her, but I can guess his errand though he told it not.” “Oh! And might the father of the maid venture so much as to ask what this errand might be?” “Nay, Myles, be not so bitter! If I cannot go with you in this matter, ’tis because I love my child even more than you can love her.” “Love your child! Love your own way and your own will, as you ever have done! Woman, do you defy me?” “Oh, Myles, Myles!” And fearlessly approaching the angry man, Barbara laid a hand upon his arm and looked straight into his face with all her brave and noble soul shining out of those eyes whose wonderful charm time had not clouded in the least. The captain met them, and the terror of his frown subsided into an angry laugh. “Well--you should not thwart me if you would not see me thwarted. But honestly, Barbara, have you forgotten or do you despise my constant wish for Lora’s future? Must I mind you once more of my contract with my cousin Ralph whereby his eldest son is to marry our daughter, and so to her and her children shall be restored the fair domain which his grandsire stole from mine? Know you not that naught in all this world sits nearer to my heart than this scheme, and that only last month I wrote to Ralph and told him that Lora was now turned eighteen, and if his boy was ready to fulfill the contract I would come to England with the maid, and see her seated at Standish Hall? Mind you all that, Mistress Barbara?” “Ay, Myles, I mind it well, and I mind too that you did not tell me of that letter till ’twas gone.” “Haply not, but what of that? Is a man bound to lay all his business before his wife, or to ask her leave to write to his own kinsman?” “’Tis my kinsman in the same degree, mind you, husband. And because I too am born of Standish I have a right to speak, I have a right to know, and to decide in this matter,--yes, as good a right as yours, Myles.”