th it, I believe. They had some
very ordinary name at the start."

The giggle, that had been suppressed up to this point, now burst forth
in a shout of laughter, wherein Laura herself joined, exclaiming, as she
did so, "Oh, Kitty, you are so ridiculous!"

"Why don't you make a rhyme and say, 'Oh, Kitty, you're so witty'? But,
Laura, it is you who are odd and ridiculous, to pretend that you don't
know that Windlow is one of the oldest names of one of the oldest
families who came over to America in the Mayflower,--regular old
aristocrats."

"Now, Kitty, I'm up in my history, if I'm not on this society stuff, and
just let me tell you that those first settlers of America who came over
in the Mayflower were _not_ aristocrats."

"Oh, Laura, when everybody who can, brags of a Mayflower ancestor! I
heard Mrs. Arkwright say to mamma, the other day that the Aplins were of
the real old Mayflower blue blood."

"Then Mrs. Arkwright, with the 'everybody' you tell of, doesn't know
what history says."

"Why, I'm sure I thought that was history."

"Well, it isn't. Last year I went with my father to Plymouth, and he
took me to the famous rock where the Mayflower pilgrims landed, and
afterward he gave me a lovely book called 'The Olden Time,' by Edmund
Sears, that told me all about the pilgrims,--who they were, and why they
came over, and everything, and I remember it said in this book that the
Plymouth pilgrims were constantly confounded--those were the very
words--with the Puritans who came over nine years later to
Massachusetts."

"But Plymouth is in Massachusetts."

"Yes, I know, but it wasn't in that day. It was simply Plymouth Colony.
The Mayflower sailed by Cape Cod into Plymouth Bay. They named the bay
Plymouth, as they named the town Plymouth, for the old Plymouth in
England."

"Did they name Cape Cod too?"

"No; that name was given years before by Captain Gosnold, an early
voyager."

"Oh, I know, he caught such a lot of codfish there. I wish he'd never
discovered the place; I hate codfish. But go on with your history
lesson, Miss Brooks. I haven't any Mayflower ancestors, and so I'm more
than resigned to have them taken down from their aristocratic peg."

"But they were lovely people,--lovely; kind and good to everybody,
whether they believed as they did or not, for they had been persecuted
themselves in the old country they had left for their opinions, and they
meant that every one in the new country should wo