They had ceased their song and stood with heavy eyes sheepishly

averted in their honest red English faces, but Captain Calvin Tabor

spoke, bowing low, yet, as I said before, with assured eyes.

"I have the honour to salute you, Mistress," he spoke with a grace

somewhat beyond his calling. He was a young man, as fair as a

Dutchman and a giant in stature. He bore himself also curiously for

one of his calling, bowing as steadily as a cavalier, with no

trembling of the knees when he recovered, and carrying his right arm

as if it would grasp sword rather than cutlass if the need arose.

"God be praised! I see that you have brought 'The Golden Horn'

safely to port," said Mistress Mary with a stately sweetness that

covered to me, who knew her voice and its every note so well, an

exultant ring.

"Yes, praised be God, Mistress Cavendish," answered Captain Tabor,

"and with fine head winds to swell the sails and no pirates."

"And is my new scarlet cloak safe?" cried Mistress Mary, "and my

tabby petticoats and my blue brocade bodice, and my stockings and my

satin shoes, and laces?"

Mistress Mary spoke with that sweetness of maiden vanity which calls

for tender leniency and admiration from a man instead of contempt.

And it may easily chance that he may be as filled with vain delight

as she, and picture to himself as plainly her appearance in those

new fallalls.

I wondered somewhat at the length of the list, as not only Mistress

Mary's wardrobe, but those of her grandmother and sister and many of

the household supplies, had to be purchased with the proceeds of the

tobacco, and that brought but scanty returns of late years, owing to

the Navigation Act, which many esteemed a most unjust measure, and

scrupled not to say so, being secure in the New World, where

disloyalty against kings could flourish without so much danger of

the daring tongue silenced at Tyburn.

It had been a hard task for many planters to purchase the

necessaries of life with the profits of their tobacco crop, since

the trade with the Netherlands was prohibited by His Most Gracious

Majesty, King Charles II, for the supply being limited to the

English market, had so exceeded the demand that it brought but a

beggarly price per pound. Therefore, I wondered, knowing that many

of those articles of women's attire mentioned by Mistress Mary were

of great value, and brought great sums in London, and knowing, too,

that the maid, though innocently fond of such things, to which she

had, moreover, the natural right of youth and beauty such as hers,

which should have all the silks and jewels of earth, and no

questioning, for its adorning, was not given to selfish

appropriation for her own needs, but rather considered those of

others first. However, Mistress Mary had some property in her own

right, she being the daughter of a second wife, who had died

possessed of a small plantation called Laurel Creek, which was a

mile distant from Drake Hill, farther inland, having no ship dock

and employing this. Mistress Mary might have sent some of her own

tobacco crop to England wherewith to purchase finery for herself.

Still I wondered, and I wondered still more when Mistress Mary,

albeit the Lord's Day, and the penalty for such labour being even

for them of high degree not light, should propose, as she did, that

the goods be then and there unladen. Then I ventured to address her,

riding close to her side, that the captain and the sailors should

not hear, and think that I held her in slight respect and treated

her like a child, since I presumed to call her to account for aught

she chose to do.




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