Читать книгу Ye Lyttle Salem Maide. A Story of Witchcraft онлайн

15 страница из 52

“Dear Goody,” she murmured faintly, “the Lord has struck my carnal heart with the bolt o’ His righteous anger, for I wax ill.”

That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close to the hearts of the Puritans, was shown by the manner in which the goodwives, who had greeted Deliverance with all due severity, dropped their knitting and gathered hastily around her.

“It be too long a sentence for a growing child, and it behooves us who are mothers to tell our godly magistrate so,” grumbled one hard-featured dame.

“Dear child,” murmured a rosy-cheeked young wife, who had put her baby down to assist Deliverance, “here be a sugar-plum I brought ye. We must have remembrance, gossips,” she added, “that her mother has long been dead, though Goodwife Higgins cares for her and that be well, Master Wentworth being a dreamer. Ye ken, gossips, I say it with no malice, the house might go to rack and ruin, for aught he would care, with his nose ever in the still-room.”

“Best put the child in the chimney-corner where it be warm,” suggested Goody Dennison; “beshrew me, gossips, the damp o’ these raw spring nights chills the marrow in your bones more than the frosts o’ winter.”