"Go not a-field to-day, John. It is even more cruelly hot than yesterday, and thou art overborne with toil already. Stay with me, I pray thee."
"Nay, Kate, I were indeed unfit for the leader of the brethren could I send them forth to labor that I counted too heavy for myself. Let me go, sweetheart, and if thou wilt, say a prayer that I faint not by the way."
The rest died on her lips for he was gone, yet for a few minutes longer she stood watching the tall figure as it disappeared up the hill path and listening to the murmur of a spinning-wheel in Elder Brewster's house, fitfully accompanied by a blithe tune lilted now and again by the spinner.
"Priscilla is early at her work," thought the dame. "I would I might sing and spin like that!" and with a little sigh she leaned her head against the door-post and closed her eyes; a sweet, pale face, colorless and pure as an Easter lily, and eyes whose blueness seemed to show through the weary lids with their deep golden fringe. A fair woman, a lovely woman, delicately bred, for her father was one of those English bishops whose authority her husband and his friends so resolutely denied, and both she and her sister, Pastor Robinson's wife, had "lain in the lilies and fed on the roses of life" until love led them to ardent sympathy with the Separatist movement, and they had wed with two of its most powerful leaders, while their brother, Roger White, became one himself.
"From heat to heat the day increased," and Katharine Carver lay faint and exhausted upon a settle drawn close beside the open door, when a strange sound of both assured and stumbling feet drew near, and as she started up it was to meet John Howland, half leading, half supporting her husband, whose face, deeply flushed, lay upon the other's shoulder.
"Be not over startled, dear lady!" exclaimed Howland. "The governor findeth himself a little overborne by the heat, and hath come"--
"John! Dear heart, what is it! Nay, try not to speak! Here, good John Howland, help me to lay him upon the bed--there then, dear one"--
"Fret not thyself, Kate, 't is but a pain in my head--ah--'t is shrewd enough, but it will pass--there, there, good wife, fret not thyself!"
"John Howland, wilt thou find Surgeon Fuller, and mayhap Dame Brewster, but no more. I will wring a napkin out of fair water and lay to his head, for it burneth like fire."