A Little Maid of Province Town

								

house. He said I could do as much as a woman. I can sweep out for you, and
lay the table and wash the dishes, and bring in the wood and water,
and----" there came a break in the little girl's voice, and the woman
reached out a kindly hand and took the child's bundle.
"Come in," she said, and Anne instantly felt the tenderness of her voice.
"We are poor enough, but you'll be welcome to food and shelter, child,
till such time as some of your own kinsfolk send for thee."
"I have no kinsfolk," declared Anne; "my father told me that."
"Come you in; you'll have a bed and a crust while I have them to give
you," declared the woman, and Anne Nelson went across the threshold and up
to the bare loft, where she put her bundle down on a wooden stool and
looked about the room.
There was but a narrow bed in the corner, covered with a patchwork quilt,
and the wooden stool where Anne had put her bundle. The one narrow window
looked off across the sandy cart tracks which served as a road toward the
blue waters of Cape Cod Bay. It was early June, and the strong breath of
the sea filled the rough little house, bringing with it the fragrance of
the wild cherry blossoms and an odor of pine from the scrubby growths on
the low line of hills back of the little settlement.
It was just a year ago, Anne remembered, as she unwrapped her bundle, that
she and her father had sailed across the harbor from Ipswich, where her
mother had died.
"We will live here, at the very end of the world, where a man may think as
he pleases," her father had said, and had moved their few household
possessions into a three-roomed house near the shore. Then he had given
his time to fishing, leaving Anne alone in the little house to do as she
pleased.
She was a quiet child, and found entertainment in building sand houses on
the beach, in wandering along the shore searching for bright shells and
smooth pebbles, and in doing such simple household tasks as her youth
admitted. A week before her appearance at Mrs. Stoddard's door, John
Nelson had gone out in his fishing-boat, and now he had been given up as
lost. No sign of him had been seen by the other fishermen, and it was
generally believed by his neighbors that his sloop had foundered and that
John Nelson had perished.
Some there were, however, who declared John Nelson to be a British spy,
and hesitated not to say that he had sailed away to join some vessel of
the British fleet with information as to the convenience of the harbor of
Province Town, and with such other news as he had brought from Ipswich and
the settlements nearer Boston. For it was just before the war of the
American Revolution, when men were watched sharply and taken to task
speedily for any lack of loyalty to the American colonies. And John Nelson
had many a time declared that he believed England meant well by her
American possessions,--a statement which set many of his neighbors against