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16

Six year old Faithful was knitting a stocking. Her home was a pretty stone cottage with a thick roof of straw. It was in a village, in England. Roses grew around the open door. Through the door she could see the square, gray tower of a stone church. Ivy climbed the tower. The bell in the tower rang sweet chimes. The church had pointed windows of many-colored glass. The fences between the cottages were thick green hedges. A mill stood beside a dancing river. The mill-wheel churned the water to foam. On a hill top stood a castle in miles of green park, with a stone wall around it. Lords and ladies lived there. Sometimes they drove to the church in a gay coach, or they went away to the King's court in London. They wore silks and laces and plumes and jewels. Little Faithful's English home was as pretty as a fairy story. But her father often talked of going away to the New World of America, that Columbus had found, to live. They were all safe and comfortable in England, but they were not happy. They dressed and lived more soberly than their neighbors. They liked to go to a plain meeting-house, instead of to the King's stone church. For this they were punished. Unkind people mocked them, and called them Puritans. But they were proud of that name because they tried to live pure lives.

Faithful wore a long, plain gown of dark wool. A square of white lawn was folded around her neck. On her head was a stiff white linen cap almost like a sunbonnet. Her little face was rosy and dimpled; her loving eyes as blue as violets. Her yellow hair just would curl, and that was a trouble. A little Puritan girl had to keep her hair smooth. She wore a white apron, with a pocket to hold her thimble and thread. The Puritans thought it wicked for even a little girl to be idle. Her brother Myles wore a wide-brimmed pointed hat, knee breeches and a tightly buttoned coat. He wore a wide, square-cornered white linen collar. Both of these children had big brass or silver buckles on their stout, low shoes.

One day their father said they must get ready to go to America. Other Puritan families were going with them in a sailing vessel. They had to take ever so many things with them, for they could not