Among the first sounds that Frances knew were no doubt the ringing of the axes in the forest from sunrise until sunset in winter, and at night the howling of the wolves in the forest. The first light that she remembered was probably the firelight and the light from pine-knot or candle, or daylight filtered through diamond-paned windows of greenish glass or oiled paper.
One of the first familiar faces may have been that of her father's friend, Marshvwap, King of Chickacoan.
Frances must have been a sturdy baby to have survived the cold, heat, fevers, and all the other hazards to child-life in the seventeenth century.
When Frances was old enough to toddle about, Anne and John may have played a game with her called "honey-pots," in which they carried her about in a "chair" made by crossing hands, while they chanted:
"Carry your honey-pot safe and sound Or it will fall upon the ground."
A little later they may have jumped a hop-scotch, but if so, they called it "scotch-hoppers." They probably played tag, ball, prisoner's base, asked riddles and blew soap-bubbles, as these simple amusements dated from medieval days.
Children of the seventeenth century played games but had few toys. There may have been a top to spin, and John probably played Indian with bow and arrow and club. Anne, who had been born in England, may have brought with her to the New World a stiff little puppet-like doll with a wooden face and painted hair. Frances may have had a doll made of corn-shucks, rags, corn-cobs or nuts. Or she may have had a doll like those of the Indian children, made of rawhide, feathers and wood.
The Mottrom children may have had wild animals for pets--a deer, a squirrel, or a raccoon, perhaps. The children could not venture far into the forest to play because of the dangers that lurked in its depths, but they could stand at its edge and look down the aisles between the trees, some of them "twenty feet round and Ninety high." In spring and summer the forest floor was "bespred with divers flowers" and wild strawberries. In winter they might glimpse a snowshoe rabbit flying over the snow, or a herd of deer. We can imagine them there--three little figures dressed in long clothes, exactly like those of their parents, looking into the forest and pondering upon its mysteries.