although Mrs. Brewster
was glad to have her niece stay at home in the evenings "instead", as
she told Mrs. Bradford, "of running around with those boys, and really,
my dear, Priscilla says some of the FUNNIEST things when she gets a
little er--'boiled', as she calls it--you must come over some evening,
and bring the governor."

Mrs. Brewster, Priscilla's aunt, is the ancestor of all New England
aunts. She may be seen today walking down Tremont Street, Boston, in
her Educator shoes on her way to S. S. Pierce's which she pronounces
to rhyme with HEARSE. The twentieth century Mrs. Brewster wears a
highnecked black silk waist with a chatelaine watch pinned over her left
breast and a spot of Gordon's codfish (no bones) over her right. When
a little girl she was taken to see Longfellow, Lowell, and Ralph Waldo
Emerson; she speaks familiarly of the James boys, but this has no
reference to the well-known Missouri outlaws. She was brought up on
blueberry cake, Postum and "The Atlantic Monthly"; she loves the Boston
"Transcript", God, and her relatives in Newton Centre. Her idea of a
daring joke is the remark Susan Hale made to Edward Everett Hale about
sending underwear to the heathen. She once asked Donald Ogden Stewart
to dinner with her niece; she didn't think his story about the lady
mind reader who read the man's mind and then slapped his face, was very
funny; she never asked him again.

The action of this story all takes place in MRS. BREWSTER'S Plymouth
home on two successive June evenings. As the figurative curtain rises
MRS. BREWSTER is sitting at a desk reading the latest instalment of
Foxe's "Book of Martyrs".

The sound of a clanking sword is heard outside. MRS. BREWSTER looks up,
smiles to herself, and goes on reading. A knock--a timid knock.

MRS. BREWSTER: Come in.

(Enter CAPTAIN MIKES STANDISH, whiskered and forty. In a later
generation, with that imposing mustache and his hatred of Indians,
Miles would undoubtedly have been a bank president. At present he seems
somewhat ill at ease, and obviously relieved to find only PRISCILLA'S
aunt at home.)

MRS. BREWSTER: Good evening, Captain Standish.

MILES: Good evening, Mrs. Brewster. It's--it's cool for June, isn't it?

MRS. BREWSTER: Yes. I suppose we'll pay, for it with a hot July, though.

MILES (nervously): Yes, but it--it is cool for June, isn't it?

MRS. BREWSTER: So you said, Captain.

MILES: Yes. So I said, didn't I? (Silence.)

MILES: Mistress