A Pilgrim Maid A Story of Plymouth Colony in 1620 by Marion Ames Taggart

A young girl, brown-haired, blue-eyed, with a sweet seriousness that was neither joy nor sorrow upon her fair pale face, leaned against the mast on the Mayflower’s deck watching the bustle of the final preparations for setting sail westward. A boy somewhat older than she stood beside her whittling an arrow from a bit of beechwood, whistling through his teeth, his tongue pressed against them, a livelier air than a pilgrim boy from Leyden was supposed to know, and sullenly scorning to betray interest in the excitement ashore and aboard. A little girl clung to the pretty young girl’s skirt; the unlikeness between them, though they were sisters, was explained by their being but half sisters.