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d at once adopted by the Elder's wife as her especial charge. In the next house, on a lot of land appropriated at first to John Goodman and some others, the governor had taken up his abode with his delicate wife, her maid Lois, Desire Minter their ward, and several children whom she cared for. John Howland, the governor's secretary and right-hand man, also lived here, and, like the manly man he was, hesitated not to give help wherever it was needed. Owing to Mrs. Carver's very delicate health, it had been arranged that this family should share the table at Elder Brewster's, where the young girls just mentioned were ready and glad to take charge of the household labors, leaving their elders free for other matters. In another house, placed in charge of Stephen Hopkins and his bustling wife, nearly all the unmarried men were gathered, and made a hearty and soberly jocund family. The third house, headed by Isaac Allerton and his daughters, was the home of Bradford, Winslow, Mistress Susannah White, with her children, Resolved and Peregrine, and her brother, Doctor Fuller, with their little nephew, Samuel Fuller, whose father and mother both lay on Cole's Hill. In the Common house, under charge of Master Warren, with the Billingtons as officials, were gathered the rest of the company except Standish, who slept in his own house on the hill, but had his place at Elder Brewster's table when he chose to take it. Hither he now came, silent and grave as was his wont since Rose died, but ever ready to give his aid and sympathy, whether in handicraft or counsel, to the governor, the elder, or the women struggling with unwonted labors. Of lamentation there was none, and since the day the soldier stood beside that open grave and watched the mould piled upon the coffin his own hands had fashioned no man, not even the elder, had heard his wife's name, or any allusion to his loss, pass his lips; yet those who knew him best marked well the line that had deepened between his brows, the still endurance of his eyes, and the sadness underlying every intonation of his voice; and those who knew him not, and had in their shallower natures no chord to vibrate in sympathy with this grand patience, comprehended it not, and seeing him thus ready and helpful, not evading such pleasant talk as lightened the toil of his comrades, not preoccupied or gloomy, these thought the light wound was already healed, and more than one beside Desire Minter
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