"
"Humph! The maids have come, then?"
He nodded. "There's a goodly ship down there, with a goodly
lading."
"Videlicet, some fourscore waiting damsels and milkmaids,
warranted honest by my Lord Warwick," I muttered.
"This business hath been of Edwyn Sandys' management, as you
very well know," he rejoined, with some heat. "His word is good:
therefore I hold them chaste. That they are fair I can testify, having
seen them leave the ship."
"Fair and chaste," I said, "but meanly born."
"I grant you that," he answered. "But after all, what of it? Beggars
must not be choosers. The land is new and must be peopled, nor
will those who come after us look too curiously into the lineage of
those to whom a nation owes its birth. What we in these
plantations need is a loosening of the bonds which tie us to home,
to England, and a tightening of those which bind us to this land in
which we have cast our lot. We put our hand to the plough, but we
turn our heads and look to our Egypt and its fleshpots. 'T is
children and wife - be that wife princess or peasant - that make
home of a desert, that bind a man with chains of gold to the
country where they abide. Wherefore, when at midday I met good
Master Wickham rowing down from Henricus to Jamestown, to
offer his aid to Master Bucke in his press of business to-morrow, I
gave the good man Godspeed, and thought his a fruitful errand and
one pleasing to the Lord.
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