one might cheapen a ribbon or a stay-lace--what is there here
to live for?"

"Naught for thee, my poor Desiree, I'm afraid," said Priscilla almost
tenderly. "And I wish thou couldst go home, but a maid may not venture
herself alone."

"I know she may not, and I tried to make my cousin Carver think as I do,
that so she might persuade the Governor to go, but wow! at the first
word she fell upon me with such a storm of words"--

"Sweet Mistress Carver storm!" cried the two girls derisively, and
Priscilla added more gravely,--

"I can fancy what she tried to make thee feel, Desiree; but thou couldst
not feel it, and mayhap most young maids like us could not, but thou
seest Mary and I are different; our fathers and our mothers came hither
with their lives in their hands to do a work, and we came to help them.
Well, the lives were paid down and the work was not done, so we who
remain, simple maids though we be, are in a manner bound to carry on
that work, and not let them have died quite in vain. And their graves
are here."

Mary Chilton bowed her head upon her knees, and for a moment there was a
great silence, then Desire said querulously,--

"Well, but what is there for me to do?"

"Come home and help me cook the dinner!" cried Priscilla jumping to her
feet, while practical Mary added, "And I dare say some man will marry
thee, Desire, and thou mayest have children."

"I! I'll marry no man here--save one!" protested Desire tossing her head
and rising more slowly.

"Save one! Now is that happy he named John Howland?" asked a merry voice
at her elbow, and Desire with a start and a laugh exclaimed,--

"Fie on thee, John, to take a poor maid at her word so shortly."

"Thou shouldst not shout thy resolves into a man's ear didst not thou
want him to hear them," replied John carelessly, and forgot the idle
words which were to bear an ill and unexpected crop for him at no
distant date.

CHAPTER XIX.

SOWED AND REAPED IN ONE DAY.

"Bradford thou wast bred to the land wast not?" demanded Hopkins
bursting into the house where William Bradford, ill and crippled with
rheumatism in his "huckle-bone" or hip-joint, sat beside the fire
reading an old Latin copy of the Georgics.

"Bred to the land? Well, my forbears were husbandmen, and the uncle who
cared for me as an orphan boy was a yeoman, but as I had some estate and
not very rugged health, they aye left me alone with my books in my young
days. But why?"

"