Then he had to think of other matters, for Ned, with an access of energy, was tumbling the goods ashore, and they must together drag them up to the Elder's house. Just at present that was home to Miles, because his mother and Dolly lived there, and he sometimes ate with them, though, as an additional mark of manhood,--so he esteemed it,--he spent his nights at the Common House.
It really came about because his friends could not shelter him. Goodwife Rigdale and Dolly had the last spare bed at the Elder's house; the cottage higher up the hill, on which Goodman Rigdale had labored, and where Goodman Cooke and Jack had now one bunk, was filled with men whose houses were building; while Master Hopkins, however well he might mean by his friend's son, had not a roof to cover his own family. So Miles slept with Giles Hopkins at the Common House, where at night the beds were placed so thick one need not step on the floor in passing from the fire to his sleeping place.
On Sunday all was changed, however, for then the Common House became a meeting-house. They tucked the beds up in corners, and swept the floor, as Miles knew to his cost, for on this, his second Saturday on the mainland, they pressed him into the service. Twice on the Sabbath the Elder taught his little company, and prayed with them there,--a sorry little company indeed, of whom fair half lay sick within the cheerless cabins, or dead beneath the level ground of the harbor bluff.
The thought of his own dead father made Miles listen attentively that day; and, when he walked staidly up to the Elder's house before twilight, he took Dolly apart into his mother's cold little chamber, where he read to her from Goodman Rigdale's black-letter Bible. He was a painful reader, but he felt it was the fit thing for him to do in filling his father's place, so, with the great book on his knees, he sat on the floor, beneath the little window that let in the light sparsely through its oiled paper, and Dolly sat by him, with her head on his shoulder. He was much elated at finding her so quiet and attentive, but, when he paused to recover breath at the end of a very tough sentence about the Perizzites, he perceived the little girl was fast asleep.