[To Have and To Hold by Mary Johnston]@TWC D-Link bookTo Have and To Hold CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PLAY AT BOWLS 2/26
All were dressed in holiday clothes, all tongues spoke, all eyes laughed; you might have thought there was not a heavy heart amongst them.
Rolfe was there, gravely courteous, quiet and ready; and by his side, in otterskin mantle, beaded moccasins, and feathered headdress, the Indian chief, his brother-in-law,--the bravest, comeliest, and manliest savage with whom I have ever dealt.
There, too, was Master Pory, red and jovial, with an eye to the sack the servants were bringing from the Governor's house; and the commander, with his wife; and Master Jeremy Sparrow, fresh from a most moving sermon on the vanities of this world.
Captains, Councilors, and Burgesses aired their gold lace, and their wit or their lack of it; while a swarm of younger adventurers, youths of good blood and bad living, come from home for the weal of England and the woe of Virginia, went here and there through the crowd like gilded summer flies. Rolfe and I were to play; he sat on the grass at the feet of Mistress Jocelyn Percy, making her now and then some courtly speech, and I stood beside her, my hand on the back of her chair. The King's ward held court as though she were a king's daughter.
In the brightness of her beauty she sat there, as gracious for the nonce as the sunshine, and as much of another world.
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