his companion. "See!" He puffed at the air, and his breath made a little white cloud. "Maybe we'd best go up on deck and run." At that word the two older boys turned to the door, but Wrestling shook his head and, pressing closer to Dolly, whispered: "Before I go, I want that you show me the Indian basket." [36] [36] Miles overheard, and delayed to draw from beneath the bunk the deal box in which the treasure was kept. Wrestling was so young that he seemed hardly more than a baby, and as a baby Miles had a kindly, protecting feeling for him; when he rose with the box he opened it so the little boy might have the first sight. Within lay a tiny basket all of silk grass, pictured on which in black and white were birds and flowers of a curious pattern. "Did your father truly bring it from the Indians?" Love asked. "He brought it home to me," Dolly explained proudly. "It was in an Indian house, and my father found it when he went ashore with Captain Standish. And so he brought it to me." Wrestling touched the fragile thing gingerly. "I wish our father fought the Indians once," he murmured. "It is better to be an Elder," Love rebuked him sternly; then added, lest Dolly's feelings be hurt, "though, to be sure, there can be but one Elder in a company. The rest must be fighting men, must they not, Miles?" But Miles gave no heed; for just then the sound of soft footsteps made him glance to the open door, at which the light drifted in, and there, standing on the threshold, he saw his mother. Years afterward, when he looked back, Miles[37] realized Goodwife Rigdale had been a young woman then, not above thirty, but in those days it seemed to him she must be old, because she was his mother; he even wondered that she had not hair streaked with gray, like Mistress Brewster. Mothers were always old, he generalized rashly, just as they were always gentle-spoken and full of kindness; only that last judgment he revoked, after he came aboard the Mayflower and heard Goodwife Billington, a true London virago, rail at her sons and saw her cuff them. [37] But his own mother was not to be belittled by naming her with Ellen Billington; she was everything that was good and to be loved, even if she did not wear
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