bird sang in my ear that they
would go to-morrow."

"What little bird?" asked Mary curiously; but before Priscilla could
reply another voice interposed; it was that of Bridget Tilley, who had
come on deck to seek her daughter Elizabeth, and now sharply inquired,--

"Another expedition, say you? And my goodman scarce brought back from
death's door, whither the first jaunt led him! Nay, now, 't is not
right, 't is all one as murder, to hale dying men out of their beds and
into that wilderness. No blessing will follow such work, and I'll cry
upon the governor or the captain or the elder to stop it!"

"What is it, Mistress Tilley? Any wrong that I can help set right?"
asked a sweet voice, and Bridget turned toward the speaker with a
somewhat more subdued manner, lowering her voice as she said,--

"Thank you kindly, Mistress Standish, and God be praised that you can be
on deck; but my matter is this," and again she poured out her anxieties
and her fears, until Rose Standish, a fair white rose now, and trembling
in the shrewd autumn air so soon to scatter her petals and bear the pure
fragrance of her life down through the centuries, until men to-day love
her whom they never knew, leaned wearily against the bulkhead and
said,--

"Rest easy, dear dame. Thou 'rt all in the right, and it behooves us to
protect our lords from their own rash courage, just as it befits their
courage to protect us against salvages and wild beasts. I will whisper
in my husband's ear that Master Tilley is all unfit to carry out his own
brave impulses, and I will conspire with Mistress Carver and Mistress
Bradford, and, above all, with our dear mother, the elder's wife, that
each shall make petition to her lord to see that no sick or overborne
man be allowed to adventure himself on the expedition. Will that satisfy
thee, dame?"

"Right well, and you are all one with the saints we used to honor,
though we do know better now."

"'T is the most comfortable promise I've heard in many a day, dear
Mistress Standish," cried Priscilla vivaciously. "And well do I believe
that the whispers of the wives are more weighty than the shouts of the
husbands. I've never proved it myself, being but a maid; yet I have ere
now marked how the prancing of the noblest steed is full deftly checked
by a silken rein."

"It were well if a rein were put upon thy tongue, girl," severely
interposed a comely matron sitting near. "Thou 'rt over forward for thy
years, Priscill