“Welcome home, William Pabodie!” cried Lucretia Brewster’s wholesome voice, scattering as with a puff of west wind the strained and bewildering atmosphere that seemed stifling the little group around the Spanish girl. “You know all these lads and lasses, your old neighbors, and I see that you have already made acquaintance with my niece Gillian,--Gillian Brewster, as we call her”-- “My name is Gillian de Cavalcanti,” interposed Gillian quietly, but Lucretia, flushing angrily, continued without looking at her, “If you will come with me, Will, I will take you to Mary and some other friends, Lora Standish and her guest, Mercy Bradford from Plymouth.” “My sister Anice well-nigh raves over Mistress Lora Standish,” replied the young man, following his hostess, but even as he did so turning to look once more at Gillian, whose eyes, soft and dewy as a chidden child’s, followed him with a vague appeal that sent a tremor through the young man’s heart. “Can it be that her aunt does not treat her well?” asked he of himself, and his next reply to Lucretia was so cold that she turned and looked at him, and then remembering said to herself,-- “The poison works quickly.” The apples were pared, cored, quartered, or sliced, and, threaded upon twine, hung in festoons upon a frame erected for the purpose on the south side of the house; the cores and skins and smaller apples were heaped into the cider-press, which on the morrow would begin its work of reducing them to the cheerful and wholesome beverage as essential to our forefathers’ comfort as tea and coffee are to ours; the bountiful supper had been eaten and merrily cleared away by a committee of bustling matrons, and at last the great houseplace, the shed, and a platform extending for some distance from the house were “sided off” and swept, to make room for the frolics which to the young people were the true meaning of the whole affair. “Kissing games” were in that day not more objectionable than round dances are now, and perhaps that visitor from Jupiter to whom we sometimes refer for impartial judgment would have found them less so. Both classes of amusement depend very much upon who indulges in them, and when Gillian’s soft warm lips frankly pressed William Pabodie’s mouth a quick flush mounted to the young man’s temples, and he cast a startled glance into the dark eyes upraised to his with a look of fathomless meaning. Lucretia Brewster saw that look, and her own matronly cheek colored angrily. Later in the evening she sat herself down beside her sister-in-law, with whom she was on very affectionate terms. “Tired, ’Cretia?” asked Mistress Love Brewster with a pleasant smile. “No, not to say tired, Sally, but a good deal worked up.” “About what?”