them, begun a harangue at the top of a shrill voice, with her
husband plucking vainly at her sleeve to temper her vehemence.
Mistress Allgood was long and lean, and gaunt, with red fires in the
hollows of her cheeks and a compelling flash of black eyes under
straight frowning brows. "Gentlemen," said she--"be quiet, John
Allgood, my speech I will have, since thou being a man hath not the
tongue of one. I pray ye, gentlemen listen to my cause of complaint.
Here my goodman and me did come to this oppressed colony of
Virginia, seven years since, having together laid by fifty pound
from the earnings of an inn called the Jolly Yeoman in Norfolkshire,
in which for many years we had run long scores with little return,
and we bought a small portion of land and planted tobacco, and set
out trees. Then came the terror of the Indians, and Governor
Berkeley, always in wait for the word of the king, and doing
nothing, and once was our house burned, and we escaped barely with
our lives, and then came Nat Bacon, and blessings upon him, for he
made the beginning of a good work. And then did the soldiers riding
to meet him, so trample down our tobacco fields with horse hoofs,
that the leaves lay in a green pumice, and that crop lost. And then
this Navigation Act, which I understand but little of except that it
be to fill the king's pockets and empty ours, has made our crops of
no avail, since we but sent the tobacco as a gift to the king, so
little we have got in return. And look, look!" she shrieked, "I pray
ye look, and sure this is the best I have, and me always going as
well attired as any of my station in England. I pray ye look! Sure
'tis past mending, and the stitches and the cloth go together, as
will the colony, unless somewhat be done in season to mend its
state." So saying, up she flung her arm, and all the under side of
the body of her gown was in rags, and up she flung the other, and
that was in like case.

Then the other woman, who was a strapping lass, and had been a
barmaid ere she came to Virginia in search of a husband, where she
had found one Richard Longman afraid not to do her bidding and wed
her, since he was as small and mild a man as ever was, joined in: "I
say with Mistress Allgood," she shrieked out, and flung her own
buxom arms aloft with such disclosures that a roar of laughter
spread through the hall, and her husband blushed purple, and a
protest gurgled in his throat. But at that his wife, who verily was