e meat more succulent of
these than of any I ever saw at home," replied John Alden. "And the
size! Do but look at this fellow, he will scale well-nigh twenty pound
if an ounce."

"If 't were a goose I would name it John, 't would be so prodigious a
goose," replied Priscilla with a glance so saucy and so bewitching that
her adorer forgot to reply, and she went briskly on,--

"Come now, young man, there's much to do and scant time to talk of it.
Call me some of those gaping boys yonder and let them pluck these fowl,
and bid John Billington come and break up these deer. And I must have
wood and water galore to make meat for a hundred men. Stir thyself!"

"I was thinking, Priscilla--why not stuff the turkeys with beechnuts?
There is store of them up at our cottage."

"How came they there? Doth our doughty Captain go birds-nesting and
nutting in his by-times?"

"Nay, but I did, that is, I gathered the nuts for thee, and then--then
feared if I offered them thou 'dst only flout me"--

"Oh, sure never was a poor maid so bestead with blind men--well, fetch
thy beechnuts."

"Nay, Priscilla, but blind, blind? How then am I blind, maiden, say?"

"Why, not to have discovered ere this how I dote upon beechnuts. There,
get thee gone for them."

The dressing of beechnuts proved a rare success, but the preparation
proved so long a process that only the delicate young bird made ready
for the table where Mistress Brewster presided was thus honored,
although in after times Priscilla often made what she called
goose-dressing; and when a few years later some sweet potatoes were
brought to Plymouth from the Carolinas, she at once adopted them for the
same purpose.

And so the festival went on for its appointed length of three days, and
perhaps the hearty fellowship and good will manifested by the white men
toward their guests, and their determination to meet them on the ground
of common interests and sympathies, went quite as far as their evident
superiority in arms and resources toward establishing the deep-founded
and highly valued peace, without which the handful of white men could
never have made good their footing upon that stern and sterile coast.

On the Saturday the feast was closed by a state dinner whose composition
taxed Priscilla as head cook to the limit of her resources, and with
flushed cheek and knitted brow she moved about among her willing
assitants with all the importance of a Bechamel, a Felix, the
_maitre-d'