“They’re just going to supper, and while they sit down we can slip away if you like, and in sooth you do look weary,” said Bradford not unkindly, and Gillian, in a little impulse of womanliness, replied with a wan smile,-- “Nay, I’ll not take you from your supper. There’s a roast pig and apple-sauce, I hear.” “Oh, that’s naught, that’s naught,” protested the young man; but his healthy appetite so rose up in approval of the roasted suckling that it looked out at his eyes, and Gillian, laughing a little, scoffingly said,-- “If it’s naught to you, it’s something to me, and I’ll not stir till I’ve had roast pig and seed-cake and a glass of sweet wine, and mayhap a little taste of arrack punch. May I sit by you, Will, and sip out of your glass?” “Yes, that will be fine,” cried Will, seeing a happy compromise open before him. “If you’ll sit by me and look at no other fellow but me, I’ll stay; but if you’re going to tease me, I’ll not.” “I’ll look at none but you,” promised Gillian gently, but her active brain was already shaping the query, “What does he know? What has he heard?” and then replying to itself, “What matter! Fools all of them, and I the worst fool of all.” So amidst the frank, possibly unrefined, certainly hearty merriment of the time and place the roast pig and roasted russet apples were eaten, and the loaf of seed-cake and another of fruit-cake were cut in great wedges and passed around, and a choice comfiture of wild cranberries with candied lemon peel and plenty of sugar was served on little wooden trenchers, carved in the winter evenings by Samuel Jenney as a present to his bride; and there was plenty of beer and cider, which to our hardy sires were no more injurious than cold water to us, who have bred nerves in place of their muscles and brawn; and there was sweet Spanish wine for the ladies, passed from hand to hand in a little pewter wine-cup, burnished like silver; and there was a good joram of punch for every man; and the girls with little gasps and chokings put their lips to the edge of the rummers, while Gillian, nestling close to William Bradford’s side, was gentle and quiet as a chidden child, and spoke to none but him, eating the while as a bird might, and no more, until in his heart the young man felt that William Pabodie was after all something of a churl, and not over courteous to the governor’s guest, and Pabodie forgetting them both watched Betty Alden, who now and again glanced at or spoke to him just as she did to Sam Jenney or John Howland, and was the brightest, the merriest, the most winsome lass of that gay circle of men and maids. “And now we’ll go, Will,” whispered Gillian, as all rose from the table. “Yes, poor little Jill, we’ll go now,” replied Bradford far more tenderly than ever he had spoken before; and Joseph, who heard it, turned sharply, and surveying his brother with astonishment whispered,-- “If there’s a score, need we make it two-and-twenty, Bill?”