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Even in these streets had been left the stumps of trees after the trunks were removed, which served to give an untidy look to the whole, making it seem as if one were in a place where had been built shelters only for a little time, and which would shortly be abandoned.

The welcome which was given us, however, was even warmer than we would have received at home in England, and little wonder that these gentlefolk whom we had known there, should be overjoyed to see us here.

Both Susan and I came to understand, not many months afterward, how great can be the pleasure one has at seeing old friends whom he had feared never to meet again in this world.

It was a veritable feast which these good people of Salem set before us, and yet so strange was the cookery, that I am minded to describe later some of the dishes at risk of dwelling overly long upon matters of no importance.

MAKING COMPARISONS

Master Winthrop said, when we were going on board the ship again, that although it was nothing but peas, pudding, and fish, quite coarse as compared with what we would have had at home in England, save as to the venison pie, it all seemed sweet and wholesome to him.

When the day was come to an end, we went into the ship once more, for there were not spare beds enough in all the town to serve for half our party, and you may be very certain that once we were gathered again in the great cabin, all talked eagerly concerning what had been done; at least our parents did, for it would have been unseemly in us children to interrupt while our elders were talking.

Mother was not well satisfied with the houses, believing it would be possible to make dwellings more like those we left behind; but father bade her have patience, saying that a shelter from the weather was the first matter to be thought of, and that the pleasing of the eye could well come later, after we had more with which to work.

She, thinking as was I at the moment, of the floor in the house where we ate the venison pie, declared stoutly that there would be no more of labor in laying down planks, at least in the living-room, than in beating the earth hard, as it seemingly had been where we visited.

Then, laughingly, he bade her rest content, nor set her mind so strongly upon the vanities of this world, saying that if God permitted him to raise a roof, so that his wife and child might be sheltered from the sun and from the rain, he would be satisfied, even though the legs of his table stood upon the bare earth.

It was this conversation between my parents that caused the other women to talk of how they would have a home built, until Lady Arabella put an end to what was almost wrangling,—for each insisted that her plan for a dwelling in this New World was the best,—by saying that whatsoever God willed we should have, and that it would be more than we deserved.

AN INDIAN GUEST AND OTHER VISITORS

Both Susan and I had gazed about us eagerly when we went on shore, hoping to see a savage. We were not bent on meeting him near at hand, where he might do us a mischief; but had the desire that a brown man might go past at a distance, and we were grievously disappointed at coming aboard the ship again without having seen one.

Therefore it is that you can well fancy how surprised and delighted we were next morning when, on going on deck just after breakfast to have another look at this new town, whom should we see walking to and fro on the quarter-deck with Master Winthrop, as if he had been one of the first gentlemen of the land, but a real Indian!

There were the feathers, of which we had heard, encircling his head and ending in a long train behind. His skin was brown, or, perhaps, more the color of dulled copper. He wore a mantle of fur, with the skin tanned soft as cloth, and that which father said was deer hide cunningly treated until it was like to flannel, had been fashioned into a garment which answered in the stead of a doublet.