Page:David Alden's Daughter.djvu/41

Rh A week later, Samuel Cheeseboro, paler and thinner than when he drove his cattle over Boston Neck, but otherwise very nearly his own man, lay upon a broad wooden bench beneath the balm o' Gilead trees that shaded David Alden's doorstep.

Near him sat David himself, comfortably smoking his evening pipe, and chatting with John Seabury, the husband of Elizabeth Alden, while that young matron, crouching upon the doorstep, held a half-whispered conversation with her mother sitting just inside the house. Priscilla, a comely, fair haired maid of eighteen, and Alithea, her younger sister, strolled up and down just out of earshot, and laughed and murmured little confidences, and laughed again in the sweet foolishness of untired youth, and made so fair a picture in the summer gloaming that Samuel Cheeseboro answered more than once at random to the wise remarks his host was making upon the result of Andros's maladministration.

Suddenly his reverie was interrupted by a question from John Seabury.

"Shall you be able to ride by then, Cheeseboro?"

"Ride by—when? where?"

"For the where, to thy own home, man, and to mine, to Stonington," returned the other, laughing. "And for the when, it is just what I was asking of thee. My wife and I would set forward to-morrow, or on Wednesday by farthest, but I am doubting if you can ride all day, and for more than one