the brook at a point where the captain and he had dug a semicircular
basin and paved it about with white sea-pebbles by way of a lavatory, he
made his toilet, chiefly by throwing the clear cool water in bucketfuls
over his head and neck, and then rubbing himself with a coarse towel
until the crisp hair curled vivaciously, and the fair skin glowed out
from under its coat of sunbrown in strong relief to the white teeth and
blue eyes that made the face so comely in its strength.

A little brushing of the dark doublet and leathern small-clothes, the
low russet boots and knitted hose that completed his costume, and the
unwilling envoy strolled down the hill to Elder Brewster's cottage and
paused unseen and unheard outside the open door. It was the quiet time
in the afternoon when the rougher labors of the day were ended, and the
housewife might rest herself with the more delicate tasks of spinning,
knitting, or needlework, for it was in these, "the good old days" we all
so plaintively lament, that the distich--

"Man may work from sun to sun
But woman's work is never done"--

originated, and was something more than a bitter jest.

In the elder's busy household all the women were using this hour for
their own refreshment. Mistress Brewster was lying upon her bed, Mary
Chilton had taken her knitting and gone to sit awhile with Desire Minter
and Elizabeth Tilley, and Priscilla drawing her quaintly carved
spinning-wheel into the middle of the room so that she could look out of
the window giving upon the brook and distant Manomet, was spinning some
exquisitely fine linen thread, with which she purposed to weave cambric
delicate enough for kerchiefs and caps. As she spun, she sang as the
birds sing, that is from the heart, and not from the score; and now it
was a blithe chanson brought by her mother from her French home, and now
it was a snatch of some Dutch folks-lied or some Flemish drinking-song,
and again the rude melody of an old Huguenot hymn, the half devout, half
defiant invocation of men who prayed with naked swords in their hands.
But suddenly into the sonorous strains of Luther's Hymn broke the joyous
trill of a linnet's song, and the bird alighting upon a neighboring
poplar seemed challenging the unseen songster to a trial of skill. The
stately hymn broke off in a little burst of laughter; and then accepting
the challenge, the girl took up the linnet's strain in an unworded song,
sweeter, richer, more full