“Did they name Cape Cod too?”

“No; that name was given years before by Captain Gosnold, an early voyager.”

“Oh, I know, he caught such a lot of codfish there.  I wish he’d never discovered the place; I hate codfish.  But go on with your history lesson, Miss Brooks.  I haven’t any Mayflower ancestors, and so I’m more than resigned to have them taken down from their aristocratic peg.”

“But they were lovely people,—­lovely; kind and good to everybody, whether they believed as they did or not, for they had been persecuted themselves in the old country they had left for their opinions, and they meant that every one in the new country should worship as they pleased.  They were very intelligent people, too, though, as this history says, ‘from the middle and humbler walks of English life.’  It was the men who came over to Massachusetts Bay and settled in Boston who were the aristocrats, and they were not nearly so liberal and generous as the Plymouth men.  The head ones were stiff and overbearing, and meddled and interfered with people who didn’t think as they did, and made a lot of strict little laws about all sorts of things, so that the name of ‘Puritan’ and ‘puritanical’ came to be used for anything that was bigoted and narrow-minded; and these names have stuck to all New England, and papa says that at this day people mix up things, and think that the Mayflower people and Boston people were all alike.”

Kitty Grant gave a little hop, skip, and jump here, to Laura’s astonishment.  “Oh, Laura, it’s such larks,” she cried out.  The two girls were walking down Beacon Street on their way home from school, and Laura looked about her to see what Kitty had so suddenly discovered to call out such an exclamation.  Seeing nothing unusual, she asked, “What is such larks?”

Kitty laughed.  “Oh, Laura, can’t you see that this little fact you have pulled out from this tangled-up colony business, this dear dreadful little fact that the Mayflowers were not aristocrats, only—­what does your history book say?  Oh, I have it—­’from the middle and humbler walks of English life;’ not blue Mayflowers, but common colors—­can’t you see that it will be such larks for me to use this little fact like a little bombshell, when Mrs. Arkwright, or Maud, or Flo Aplin, or any of these Mayflower braggers begin to hold forth?”

“Why, Kitty, I thought you liked Maud and Flo!”

“I do when they don’t give me too much Mayflower.  I’ve always thought, and so has mamma, that this was their one fault,—­that if it wasn’t for that, they would be pretty near perfect; and now—­and now, Brooksie, I shall proceed to be the means of grace that shall make them paragons of perfection.  Oh, Laura, you’re a treasure with that head of yours crammed full of facts, and I’ll forgive you anything for this last little fact, even for neglecting me for that little Bodn girl!”

“I haven’t neglected you.”