But the captain took not the offered hand nor unbent his angry brow. Rising from the bench he paced up and down for a moment, then stopping in front of Barbara calmly said,-- "Nay, I'm not angry. At first I was astonied that a gentlewoman could so forget herself; but I do remember that Thomas Standish, your father, married beneath his station, and so imported a strain into the blood of his noble house that will crop out now and again in his children. I should not therefore too much admire at such derelictions from courtesy and gentlehood as I but now have seen." As he slowly spoke his bitter words the lingering gleams of laughter and the softening lines of penitence faded from Barbara's face. Rising to her height, nearly equal with that of her cousin, she gazed full into his angry eyes with the blue splendor of her own all ablaze with indignation and contempt. "You dare to make light of my mother, do you, Captain Standish! My dear and dearly honored mother, who in her brave love endured the poverty and the labors that my father had no skill to save her from. My mother, who carried her noble husband upon her shoulders as it were, and would not even die till he was dead. Myles Standish, I take shame to myself that I am kin to you, and if ever I do wed, it shall be to lose my name and forget my lineage." She passed him going down the hill, but with a long step he overtook her, saying almost timidly,-- "Nay, nay, thou 'rt over sharp with me, Barbara! I said, and I meant, no word against thy mother, of whom I ever heard report as one of the sweetest and faithfullest of wives"-- "There, that will do, sir. My mother needs no praise of yours, and, thanks be to God, hath gone where she may rest from the burden of her high marriage. Let me pass an 't please you, Master Captain." "But Barbara, nay Barbara, stay but to hear a word"-- "There have been words enow and to spare. I go now to tell the governor that I am minded to take passage in the Anne once more. My mother's folk in Bedfordshire, yeomen all of them, Captain Standish, will make me gay and welcome, and with them and such as them will I live and die." "And fill thy leisure with fashioning silk purses out of fabric thou 'lt find to hand," cried the captain, his temper flashing up again; but Barbara neither turned nor replied as she fled down the hill to hide the tears she could no longer restrain. Howbeit she said no word to Bradford of the return passage, a fact which Standish easily discovered when early next morning he met the governor and stopped to say to him,-- "Well met, Will; I was on my road to seek thee, man." "Ay, and for what, brother?" "Why, Will, I'm moped with naught to do, and all these strange faces at every turn. I liked it better when we were to ourselves and it was only to fight the Neponsets now and again. I fain would find some work further agate than yon palisado."