“Now, by my faith! there goes the meerschaum that Jans Wiederhausen carved on purpose for a parting gift to me when we left Leyden ten year ago. And serves me right for wasting time on such boys’ tricks as yon brag of what I might have done had all been other than it was. Well, well! Sorry and sad I am to lose that pipe! Now I must turn to the one Hobomok has carved out of what I take to be a jasper stone, but ’t is heavy, and cannot drink up the poison of the tobacco as my meerschaum did. There’s naught for a pipe like meerschaum, Will.” “Clay is well enough for me,” replied the governor with a smile, as he brought a new clay pipe from the cupboard and presented it to Myles. Nor shall we be surprised to hear that when, a year later, Captain William Pierce came over in the Lyon to Boston Bay, he brought a fine meerschaum pipe as a present from Governor Bradford to his friend Captain Standish. CHAPTER XIV. SIR CHRISTOPHER ENJOYS THE CHASE. Five days later, Priscilla Alden sat in the gloaming of the wild March day before a fire so cheerful as to be truly perilous to the chimney of sticks laid up with mud attached like an elongated hornet’s nest to the outside of the house. Upon her knees lay little Sally, future wife of Alexander Standish, but just now a child of two years old, with a bad cold upon her lungs and a tendency to croup, or, as her mother called it, quinsy; and it was by way of an ounce of prevention that Priscilla was roasting the little thing before this huge fire, and at the same time diligently rubbing her chest and throat with goose grease. The child, hardly knowing whether to be amused or annoyed at the process, kicked and struggled, uttering little cries varying from crowing laughter to indignant squeals, while the mother made all the play she could of the affair, now tickling the small creature in her fat neck, now answering her cries with counter-cries and merry Boo! Boo! Boo! and anon,-- “See, Sally! See the pretty fire! Shall mother throw Sally in and burn her all up?” rubbing away meantime, until the child’s white skin glowed like a rose and glistened like a mirror. “She looks like the suckling pig you roasted last Thanksgiving, mother,” remarked John junior, who stood drying his feet before the unusual fire, preparatory to rushing out and wetting them again. “Why so she is, mother’s darling little piggie-wiggie, mother’s little suckling piggie-wiggie, and she shall be all nicely basted and set down to roast for daddy’s supper, so she shall! Now, now, now! One more little rub to drive the basting well in! Now, now, now, mammy’s little Sally! Phew! who’s at the door, Johnny? Run and shut it before the air reaches little sister!”