"Oh--maybe they do and I'm just foolish." "I guess you are, but very wonderful." Maneuvered thus against a lee shore with the broadside raking him from bow to stern, Ben mumbled: "'Deed I'm not." "Not poo," said Charity, sinking him.... "Do you go often to church, Mistress Charity?" "We're Church of England." "Oh, so was my mother." "Then a'n't you too?" "Well--my father was not a member of the congregation at Deerfield, and my Uncle John is not a churchgoer, nor--nor am I." "Um. Thought everyone was obliged to go." "My Uncle John says it was so, years past. Now, if everyone went there wouldn't be meeting-houses to hold 'em.... Do you like going?" "Mr. Binyon was very wonderful." "He is--no longer with you?" Charity shook her head and sighed. "I do treasure his memory. He thundered, as with the voice of many waters." "He--uh--died?" "Nay, he went back to England. Later they said his steps went down unto the--that is, he joined--well, somebody. I don't just know. Mr. Mitching is not wonderful. He whuffles. In fact he is...." "Poo?" Charity came quite close, and seemed perilously near to smiling. "_You_ said that--but I'll never tell. Nay, I do hold in my heart many things that Mr. Binyon--thundered--but mustn't speak of him, and yet I do sometimes, because everyone says I own the nature of a heedless brat." "I don't say so." "You are different. Mr. Binyon spoke as with the voice of angels. Somebody said he was forty--he didn't look so terrible old.... Were all your people killed at Deerfield, Mr. Cory?" "My father and mother. My brother escaped, with me. He's fifteen now, and I'm seventeen. And you?" "Thirteen in May. A sad time--nobody will ever listen." "You don't mean you're going to be thirteen forever?" "Do not be poo...." "He's a much better student than I, Reuben is." "I can read, by the way.... Was your mother very beautiful?" "Why--yes, Charity, she was. Everyone should be able to read." "I thought so because you are beautiful." "Now, Charity! You ought not----" "I know. Alway, everything wrong." "Not that, but--oh, never mind.... What do you like to read?" "Not romances. Faith reads those, by the way." "I've read but a few." In Mr. Kenny's helter-skelter library, Ben had had a glimpse of Aphra Behn and her long-winded imitators; he had rather enjoyed the swashbuckling of _Oroonoko_. "Our tutor keeps us so hard pressed with the classics we can't read much else." "Um ... Mr. Cory, is it true that swallows spend the winter at the bottom of frozen ponds and streams all naked of any feathers?" "Nay, I've heard that but don't believe it. They must go south like so many others and return in the spring." "Um. All the same I drew a picture of some of them under the water all naked of any feathers, and another on the brink--he hath just risen and put his feathers on again." She gulped and stuck out a blunt jaw. "I draw many pictures, when I ought to be sewing. I like cooking if I can cook what I like."